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'npIE  DRAMA 
1         TO-DAY 

Bt  ChARLTON AyiDKEfFS 


BAN  DIEGO    ^ 


cZ^ 


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THE  DRAMA  TO-DAY 


THE     DRAMA 
TO-DAY 


BY 


CHARLTON  ANDREWS 


PHILADELPHIA  &  LONDON 

J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 

1913 


OOPTBIGBT,    1913,   BT  J.   B.   LIPPINCOTT  COMPANT 


FUBLI8BED  BBPTEMBEB,    I913 


PBINTED  BY  J.   B.    LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 

AT  THE  WASaiNQTON  SQTTABB  PBB8S 

PHILADELPHIA,   U.  8.  A. 


TO 

GEORGE  PIERCE  BAKER 


PREFACE 

INTEREST  in  the  drama  as  a.  distinct  art 
has  never  been  greater  than  at  the  present 
time,  and  the  desire  to  study  it  seriously 
and  intelligently  has  never  before  been  so  wide- 
spread. In  spite  of  this  fact,  however,  there  exists 
no  brief  separate  treatment,  in  convenient  form, 
of  the  authors  and  the  plays  with  which  the  active 
theatre  now  concerns  itself.  There  are  collected 
discussions  of  certain  groups  of  playwrights, 
volumes  dealing  with  the  drama  of  individual 
nations  or  movements,  and  in  the  periodicals 
innumerable  fugitive  articles  biographical  and 
critical.  But  there  is  no  brief  compendium  of 
the  drama  to-day,  as  it  is  practised,  not  only  in 
England  and  America  but  also  upon  the  Conti- 
nent. It  is  to  supply  the  need  of  such  a  manual 
that  the  present  treatise  has  been  written.  Little 
effort  has  been  made  to  shed  new  light  upon 
the  topics  discussed;  the  attempt  has  been 
rather    to    present    in   small    compass   accurate 


PREFACE 

general  information  as  to  the  leaders  of  the 
modern  stage  and  their  work,  and  to  offer,  in 
passing,  some  opinions  as  to  the  prospects  and 
tendencies  of  dramatic  art  in  our  day. 

C.A. 


CONTENTS 


PAGD 

I.    Definitions 9 

II.    Realism  and  the  "  Literary  "  Drama 35 

III.  The  Americans 61 

IV.  The  British 105 

V.    The  Continentals 169 

VI.    Prospective 206 


DEFINITIONS 

THE  drama  is  a  species  in  the  genus 
fiction.  Brunetiere,  following  Hegel, 
asserts  that  it  differs  from  the  other 
forms  of  literature  in  that  it  must  always  deal 
with  some  exertion  of  the  human  will.  The 
business  of  the  drama  is  to  produce  an  intense 
emotional  effect,  and  such  an  effect  is  most  readily 
aroused  by  the  spectacle  of  a  struggle.  In  a  play, 
there  is  usually  a  chief  character  who,  desiring  some 
one  thing  above  all  else,  strives  for  it  with  all  his 
power.  When  Aristotle  called  tragedy  the  imita- 
tion of  an  action,  by  "action"  he  doubtless  meant 
struggle.  A  play,  then,  is  a  fight,  a  sort  of  glorified 
prize  fight,  wherein  the  hero  is  pitted  against  ad- 
verse forces,  human  or  otherwise,  within  or  with- 
out, the  reward  of  victory  being  the  object  of  his 
dearest  desires.  Now,  a  fight — prize  fight,  bull 
fight,  cock  fight,  battle  of  wits,  debate,  physical, 

intellectual,  or  moral  contest  of  whatsoever  sort — 

9 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

is,  to  repeat,  the  thing  best  adapted  in  human  ex- 
perience to  the  excitation  of  intense  emotion.  The 
great  battles  of  Hfe  and  Hterature  have  furnished 
the  material  for  the  great  drama:  Prometheus 
versus  Jupiter;  (Edipus  versus  the  Fates;  Romeo 
and  Juliet  versus  their  parents;  Tartuffe  versus 
Orgon;  Lady  Teazle  versus  society;  Laura  Murdock 
versus  circumstances;  Cyrano  de  Bergerac  versus  his 
nose.  At  the  foundation  of  every  drama,  then,  is 
a  fight.  The  playwright  generally  deals  with  what 
Stevenson  calls  *'the  great  passionate  crises  of  ex- 
istence, when  duty  and  inclination  come  nobly  to 
the  grapple.'* 

This,  however,  is  not  the  material  of  all  fiction. 
The  hero  of  the  novel  may  be  passive;  he  may  be 
merely  the  inactive  sport  of  circumstances.  The 
hero  of  the  play  must  be  active.  He  must  contend 
against  the  opposition.  The  playwright,  too, 
works  under  high  pressure,  in  an  atmosphere  of 
rigid  limitation.  He  must  tell  his  story  "in  such 
skilfully  devised  form  and  order  as  shall,  within 
the  limits  of  an  ordinary  theatrical  representation, 
give  rise  to  the  greatest  possible  amount  of  that 

peculiar  kind  of  emotional  effect,  the  production 
10 


DEFINITIONS 

of  which  is  the  one  great  function  of  the  theatre." 
A  true  play  cannot  be  formed  of  mere  passive 
character  analysis.  The  theatre  is  distinctively  a 
place  for  the  display  of  volitional  activity.  The 
more  energetic  a  nation,  therefore,  the  greater  will 
be  its  drama.  Lotus  eaters  furnish  forth  nothing 
but  lyricism.  The  drama  of  any  nation  flour- 
ishes in  the  time  of  greatest  national  vitality: 
in  Greece  after  Salamis;  in  England  after  the 
Armada;  in  France  under  Louis  XIV. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  most  effective  scenes  in  a 
play  will  be  those  in  which  the  contending  forces 
are  displayed  in  actual  grapple.  Shakespeare 
shows  us  the  Montagues  and  the  Capulets  brawling 
in  the  street,  before  he  introduces  us  to  the  scenes 
of  love-making.  The  real  interest  in  a  drama  begins 
when  the  emotions  are  first  aroused  by  the  spectacle 
of  conflict,  or  the  strong  and  immediate  prospect 
of  conflict.  Plays  that  are  quick  to  grip  our  atten- 
tion convey  their  preliminary  information  in  terms 
of  struggle,  and  not  merely  of  conversational  nar- 
rative. Of  course,  we  may  have  some  curiosity  as 
to  the  drawing  up  of  the  articles  of  agreement  and 

in  the  arrival  of  the  combatants  at  the  ringside, 

11 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

but,  except  for  the  reaction  of  expectancy,  the 
chief  emotional  interest  begins  only  when  the  first 
blow  is  struck.  Just  as  it  is  impossible  to  sustain 
this  interest  in  a  ring  contest  in  which  the  com- 
.batants  spend  their  time  in  mere  talk  and  "spar- 
ring for  wind,"  so  in  the  drama,  when  action  ceases 
attention  begins  to  flag. 

The  drama  is  dependent,  then,  first  of  all  upon 
action,  either  physical  or  spiritual.  A  play  must 
present  primarily  a  series  of  happenings.  The 
original  mediaeval  drama,  that  tiny  four-line  trope 
of  the  Easter  service,  presented  an  occurrence: 
the  Marys  went  to  the  tomb,  and  they  found  that 
their  Lord  had  risen.  In  a  play  of  two  hours' 
duration,  it  is  often  necessary  to  set  forth  in  the 
beginning  certain  fundamental  facts — the  expo- 
sition. In  Cymbeline,  two  courtiers  gossip  and  so 
gradually  convey  the  information  to  the  audi- 
ence. In  the  opening  scene  of  Chantecler,  there  is 
barnyard  life  that  puts  the  spectator  into  the 
strange  environment,  but  delays  the  action.  The 
ideal  exposition  is  conveyed  through  an  emotional- 
ized set  of  conditions.  Instead  of  the  mere  con- 
versation of  Camillo  and  Archidamus  in  A  Winter^ s 
12 


DEFINITIONS 

TaU,  one  prefers  the  combat  which  opens  Romeo 
and  Juliet,  or  the  happening  with  which  the  essen- 
tial situation  grips  attention  in  The  Case  of  Rebel- 
lious Susan.  The  ideal  play  proceeds  through  a 
rising  series  of  happenings,  based  on  conflict,  to  a 
climax  and  thence  to  a  solution. 

There  are  four  principal  forms  of  drama,  which 
are  often  combined  and  varied  to  make  many  other 
forms.  They  are  Farce,  Comedy,  Melodrama,  and 
Tragedy.  Another  division  groups  all  drama  under 
the  three  self-explanatory  heads :  the  Story  Play; 
the  Character  Play;  and  the  Play  of  Ideas.  The 
first  emphasizes  plot  and  aims  solely  to  entertain. 
The  second  chiefly  illustrates  character  in  its  inter- 
action with  environment.  The  third  presents 
thought  in  terms  of  action,  characterization,  and 
dialogue.  Roughly  speaking,  farce  and  comedy 
deal  with  the  less  serious,  melodrama  and  tragedy 
with  the  more  serious  phases  of  life.  ^'Primarily," 
says  Professor  George  Pierce  Baker,  ''the  comic 
depends  on  the  point  of  view  of  the  writer,  for 
this  determines  his  selection  of  material,  and  on 
his  emphasis,  for  this  is  the  means  by  which  he 

makes  it  serve  the  ends  he  has  in  view."    The 

13 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

same  matter  may  be  either  comic  or  tragic,  de- 
pending on  how  it  is  viewed  or  what  phases  of  it 
are  emphasized.  The  spectacle  of  Emerson,  in 
premature  mental  decay,  charitably  depositing  a 
coin  in  the  hat  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  under 
the  impression  that  his  old  but  unrecognized 
friend  is  a  beggar,  whereas  the  hat  has  simply  been 
for  the  moment  removed  that  the  doctor  may 
wipe  his  perspiring  brow — such  an  incident  is 
humorous  or  infinitely  pathetic,  according  to  how 
you  look  at  it.  To  the  pessimist,  it  has  been  said, 
life  is  a  tragedy;  to  the  optimist,  a  comedy.  The 
dramatist  must,  of  course,  determine  in  advance 
whether  his  point  of  view  is  to  be  comic  or  tragic, 
and  then  carefully  avoid  any  abrupt  shift  in  empha- 
sis that  might  serve  to  confuse  the  spectator  in 
this  matter.  Even  so,  there  will  always  be  play- 
goers incapable  of  determining  what  is  really 
pathetic:  ill-timed  laughter  is  likely  to  punctuate 
the  most  solemn  tragedy.  There  are  even  persons 
who  find  downright  amusement  in,  for  an  extreme 
example,  the  awful  scene  at  the  end  of  Ghosts! 
A  familiar  illustration  of  the  effect  of  shifting 

emphasis  upon  the  comic  and  the  tragic  is  to  be 
14 


DEFINITIONS 

found  in  the  character  of  Shylock.  To  Elizabethan 
audiences,  with  their  race  prejudices  and  their 
love  of  savage  amusements,  the  Jew  in  The  Mer- 
chant of  Venice  was  chiefly,  if  not  wholly,  a  figure 
to  be  laughed  at.  To-day,  however,  actors  like 
Irving  have  given  Shylock  a  fairly  tragic  signifi- 
cance, so  that  the  other  interests  of  the  play  are 
in  part  lost  sight  of,  while  the  sympathies  of  the 
audience  go  out  to  the  baffled,  heart-broken  old 
man. 

Similarly,  the  distinctions  between  farce  and 
comedy,  and  between  melodrama  and  tragedy, 
are  matters  of  emphasis.  In  farce,  the  plot  is 
stressed  at  the  expense  of  the  characterization.  A 
climactic  series  of  comic  happenings  is  "farced" 
or  stujffed  into  the  two  hours'  traffic  of  the  stage, 
for  amusement  purposes  only.  In  comedy,  the 
emotional  reaction  is  derived  chiefly  from  the  char- 
acterization, and  the  mere  plot  is  less  obtrusive. 
In  melodrama,  again,  plot  takes  the  principal 
stress:  a  serious  drama  is  formed  of  thrilling 
situations  heaped  up  inordinately  at  the*  expense 
of  proper  motivation.  In  tragedy,  the  character- 
ization does  not  suffer,   and  the  motivation  is 

15 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

always  adequate.  As  variants  of  these  principal 
forms,  we  have  tragi-comedy,  comedy  of  manners, 
romantic  comedy,  comedy  of  humor,  comedy  of 
dialogue,  farce-comedy,  and  many  other  over- 
lapping classifications. 

It  will  be  seen  that  these  all  too  brief  and  hasty 
definitions  depend  largely  upon  the  separation  of 
the  three  chief  ingredients  of  all  drama:  plot, 
characterization,  and  dialogue.  Some  explanation 
of  these  terms  themselves  will,  accordingly,  not  be 
amiss. 

The  plot,  of  course,  is  the  story,  the  series  of 

unified  happenings,  having  a  beginning,  a  middle, 

and  an  end,  which  forms  the  framework  of  the 

play.    It  is  well  known  that  in  Shakespeare's  day 

this  element  was  less  regarded  than  it  is  at  present. 

The  Elizabethan  audience  was  content  with  a 

familiar  story  in  a  new  dress.    We  to-day  insist 

on  novelty  of  story.    Gozzi  and  Schiller  are  said 

to  have  investigated  all  the  possible  combinations 

of  human  affairs  and  concluded  that  there  are  but 

thirty-six  fundamental  dramatic  situations.    From 

these  bare  three  dozen  have  been  compounded  all 

plays,  as  well  as  all  other  fiction.    Ibsen  is  often 
16 


DEFINITIONS 

vaunted  as  strikingly  original,  yet  his  plots  are 
usually  traceable  to  venerable  sources.  In  Lady 
Inger  of  Ostraat,  a  mother  murders  her  unknown 
son,  just  as  in  (Edipus  the  King,  the  son  slaughters 
his  unrecognized  father.  The  same  theme,  for 
instance,  is  found  also  in  Le  Roi  s^amuse,  which  is 
the  basis  of  the  opera  Rigoletto;  in  Alfieri^s  Merope; 
in  Voltaire's  Semiramis;  in  II  Trovatore;  and  in 
Eugene  Walter's  first  play.  Sergeant  James,  later 
known  as  Boots  and  Saddles.  Take  the  dramatic 
situation  in  which  a  wife  makes  heroic  sacrifice  to 
save  her  husband.  We  find  it  in  the  Lady  Godiva 
legend,  in  Monna  Vanna,  in  Paid  in  Full,  and  in 
countless  others.  Shakespeare  borrowed  all  his 
plots  ready-made,  with  the  possible  exception  of 
Lovers  Labour^ s  Lost  and  The  Tempest;  and  Shake- 
speare's stories  have  been  retold  on  the  stage  again 
and  again.  As  for  single  scenes,  the  same  one 
often  appears  in  scores  of  plays.  The  interrupted 
wedding  ceremony  occurs  in  so  wide  a  range  of 
authors  as  that  comprising  Sardou,  Clyde  Fitch, 
Theodore  Kremer,  and  George  Bernard  Shaw. 
The  fall  of  man  through  woman,  beginning  with 

the  legend  of  Eve,  traces  itself  through  Carmen, 
2  17 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

La  Dame  aux  Camelias,  Thais,  Salom^,  Parsifal, 
and  hundreds  of  other  dramas  descendant  from 
the  story  of  Helen  of  Troy.  The  *' eternal  tri- 
angle," composed  of  two  men  and  one  woman,  or 
of  two  women  and  one  man,  is  at  the  bottom  of 
nmnberless  plays,  including  Frou-Frou,  Iris,  Hedda 
Gdbler,  and  Madame  X.  The  doctrine  of  redemp- 
tion through  woman's  love  has  been  preached  from 
time  immemorial  in  such  dramas  as  Faust,  Der 
Fliegende  Hollander,  G otter dammerung,  Peer  Gynt, 
and  The  Piper.  Similar  examples  of  plot  resem- 
blance might  be  cited  ad  infinitum,  but  these  will 
amply  serve. 

If,  however,  the  plot  of  a  play  need  not — 
indeed,  cannot — ^be  precisely  original,  it  must,  if 
effective,  possess  certain  other  quahfications.  It 
must  not  clash  with  the  characterization,  to  begin 
with;  and  this  being  interpreted  simply  means  that 
it  must  be  logical  throughout  its  development. 
The  characters  in  the  play  must  do  what  they  do 
and  say  what  they  say  from  obvious  rational  causes 
implanted  within  their  own  personalities  or  in  the 
surrounding  conditions.  Plots  fail  when  the  inci- 
dents they  comprise  occur  without  clear  and  ade- 
18 


DEFINITIONS 

quate  motivation.  The  audience  must  constantly 
understand  not  only  what  the  character  does,  but 
why  he  does  it.  Of  course,  the  stress  upon  logic 
of  plot  and  motivation  varies  according  as  we  are 
dealing  with  comedy  or  farce,  tragedy  or  melo- 
drama. But  even  in  farce  and  melodrama,  where 
plot  license  is  greatest,  the  law  of  cause  and  efifect 
must  plainly  operate  throughout.  The  funda- 
mental premises  may  be  fantastic  in  the  extreme, 
but  the  development  of  the  plot  upon  these  prem- 
ises once  laid  down  must,  from  the  standpoint  of 
logic,  be  as  irreproachable  as  in  comedy  or  tragedy. 
Not  only  must  the  development  of  the  plot  be 
logical,  but  it  must  be  arranged  in  the  emphatic 
order  of  climax.  Through  the  skilful  revelation 
little  by  little  of  just  so  much  of  the  story  as  is 
necessary  for  the  moment,  the  playwright  arouses 
the  feeling  of  suspense.  Something  new  and 
mysterious  is  ever  about  to  happen.  More  than 
that,  it  must  happen;  and  having  happened,  it 
must  be  followed  by  something  else  that  is  about 
to,  and  that  does,  in  due  course,  occur.  And  this 
series  of  happenings  must  take  place  with  ever- 
increasing  forcefulness  and  importance  up  to  a 

19 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

supreme  situation.  Then  comes,  in  technical 
parlance,  the  '^falling  action,''  the  "catastrophe," 
the  '' denouement,^ ^  the  solution.  A  play  must  not 
only  reach  a  climax,  but  it  must  appropriately  end. 
The  ending  of  the  play,  however,  must  not  be 
accomplished  at  the  cost  of  suspense,  and  so  of 
interest.  The  "big  moment"  has  come  and  gone, 
and  yet  the  play  must  be  concluded  with  expect- 
ancy to  the  last  line.  It  is  because  plajrwrights  are 
so  often  negligent  of  this  fact  that  we  have  so  many 
feeble  last  acts.  The  ability  to  maintain  dramatic 
interest  to  the  final  curtain  is  even  more  rare  than 
the  gift  of  creating  suspense  up  to  the  climax. 

It  has  been  noted,  and  it  deserves  to  be  empha- 
sized, that  action  in  the  drama,  as  in  life,  is  of  two 
kinds,  physical  and  spiritual.  We  have  likened 
the  drama  to  the  prize  fight,  which  is  its  primitive 
prototjrpe.  In  the  prize  fight,  however,  the  con- 
flict is  physical  almost  to  the  exclusion  of  the 
spiritual  element;  whereas,  in  the  true  drama, 
physical  action  often  suffers  eclipse  while  spiritual 
conflict  monopolizes  attention.  Indeed,  sheer 
physical  action  on  the  stage  is  often  enough  with- 
out dramatic  significance.  The  mere  moving  about 
20 


DEFINITIONS 

of  the  actors,  the  ''crossing"  and  recrossing,  so 
frequently  resorted  to  in  the  hope  of  animating  a 
dull  scene,  generally  fails  entirely  of  its  purpose. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  may  be  an  utter  lack  of 
physical  movement;  the  stage  may  be  held  by 
simply  two  characters  facing  each  other  without 
so  much  as  a  spoken  word,  or  even  by  but  one 
character  face  to  face  with  an  obvious  crisis,  and 
yet  the  spiritual  conflict  indicated  may  mean  action 
in  the  highest  sense  of  the  term.  A  good  play  will 
undoubtedly  include  much  of  both  sorts  of  action; 
but  in  it,  the  physical  will  chiefly  supplement  and 
interpret  the  spiritual  conflict.  In  the  notable 
"big  scenes"  of  Monsieur  Bernstein's  theatrical 
pieces,  for  example,  there  are  usually  but  two 
persons  on  the  stage,  and  there  is  almost  no  physi- 
cal action;  however,  when  the  husband  learns  of 
the  wife's  crime,  in  The  Thief;  or  when  the  Anti- 
Semite  son  learns  from  his  proud  mother  of  his 
Jewish  and  illegitimate  parentage,  in  Israel;  or 
when  the  wife  hears  from  her  statesman  spouse 
how  he  is  guilty  of  the  offense  charged  against 
him  by  his  enemies,  in  UAssaut, — we  have  the 

most  moving  mental  and  spiritual  action. 

21 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

Mr.  Augustus  Thomas  has  illustrated  this  dis- 
tinction between  physical  and  spiritual  action  as 
follows: 

"Let  us  suppose  that  an  old  man  is  standing 
by  the  mantelpiece,  a  young  man  sitting  in  a  chair. 
They  do  not  move.  The  old  man  is  talking  of 
heredity,  of  what  a  fine  thing  it  is  to  have  had  good 
parents  and  grandparents.  The  young  man  begins 
to  feel  that  a  family  line  means  much,  that  he  is 
for  that  reason  all  the  prouder  of  his  father.  Then 
suppose  the  older  man,  never  moving,  tells  the 
boy  that  the  man  of  whom  he  is  so  proud  is  not 
his  father.  There  you  get  in  the  boy  a  violent 
action,  mental  yet  violent.  Then  if  the  old  man 
tells  him  that  he  himself  is  his  father,  you  get 
another  action,  of  a  different  sort,  and  perhaps 
more  violent  because  of  the  variety.  Yet  all  the 
time  neither  of  the  men  has  moved  from  his 
position." 

The  second  of  the  chief  ingredients  of  drama 

is  characterization.     Characters  in  fiction,  as  is 

well  understood,  may  be  either  types  or  individuals. 

There  are  far  more  of  the  former  extant  than  of 

the  latter.    Obviously,  it  is  far  easier  to  present  a 
22 


DEFINITIONS 

type  than  to  create  an  individual.  The  typical 
hypocrite,  for  example,  flourishes  in  a  thousand 
plays;  but  there  is  only  one  Tartuffe.  The  typical 
swash-buckling  braggart  abounds  in  the  theatre; 
but  there  is  only  one  Falstaff.  The  typical  villain 
is  everywhere  rampant  upon  the  boards;  but  there 
is  only  one  lago.  Indeed,  so  persistent  and  so 
permanent  are  the  stock  theatrical  types  that  we 
have  been  in  the  habit  of  classifying  all  characters 
unhesitatingly  as  ''leads,"  "heavies,'*  "eccen- 
trics," "juveniles,"  "characters,"  "emotionals," 
"soubrettes,"  "ingenues,"  and  so  forth.  Heroes 
and  heroines  in  the  older  style  of  drama  have 
usually  been  referred  to  as  "straight"  parts,  in 
contradistinction  to  "character"  parts  or  "eccen- 
trics." The  tendency  nowadays  is  to  make  every 
part  in  the  play  a  "character"  part,  and  so,  in 
some  measure  at  least,  to  individuahze  the  "leads" 
out  of  the  old  wooden  Indian  manner. 

Necessarily,  the  characters  in  a  play  reveal 
themselves  and  cannot  rely,  as  do  the  figures  in  a 
novel,  upon  the  author's  comment  for  their  de- 
tailed portraiture.    Upon  what  the  character  says 

and  does,  together  with  what  other  characters  say 

23 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

about  him  and  his  reactions  upon  them,  we  base 
our  opinion  of  him.  We  take  nobody's  word  for 
what  a  character  is,  not  even  the  word  of  the 
character  himself.  If  others  give  him  a  definite 
reputation  before  he  first  appears,  he  must  five  up 
to  that  reputation  or  promptly  lose  it.  If  A 
describes  B  as  amusing  or  entertaining,  and  B 
turns  out  to  be  a  bore,  we  have  no  alternative  but 
to  accept  B  for  what  he  really  is  and  to  regard  the 
original  estimate  as  a  reflection  on  the  taste  of  A. 
If  it  then  develops  that  the  author  really  intended 
B  as  a  wit,  we  are  likely  to  lose  all  faith  in  the 
characterization  as  a  whole. 

In  spite  of  the  obviousness  of  this  proposition, 
the  characters  in  many  plays  fail  to  measure  up 
to  the  estimates  evidently  placed  upon  them  by 
their  creators.  The  reason  for  this  is  to  be  found 
often  in  the  exceedingly  delicate  relationship  be- 
tween the  characters  and  the  plot.  In  writing 
a  play,  an  author  may  adopt  either  of  two  plans: 
he  may  select  a  group  of  characters  and  allow  them 
naturally  and  logically  to  evolve  a  plot;  or  he  may 
invent  a  plot  and  into  it  insert  a  set  of  characters. 
When  the  latter  course  is  followed,  great  vigilance 
24 


DEFINITIONS 

must  be  exercised  to  prevent  the  exigencies  of  the 
plot  from  forcing  the  characters  into  inconsistent 
conduct.  The  author  has  intended  C  to  be  an 
honest  and  a  simple-hearted  man;  but  unfortu- 
nately, to  carry  out  the  preconceived  action,  C 
must  be  made,  abruptly  and  in  violence  to  his 
proclaimed  nature,  to  do  an  underhanded  deed. 
If  the  playwright,  either  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, permits  this  to  occur,  he  weakens,  if  he 
does  not  actually  destroy,  the  audience's  faith  in  all 
his  characterizations.  On  the  other  hand,  even 
an  interesting  and  consistent  set  of  characters  may 
be  portrayed  in  a  plot  that  is  weak  and  unattrac- 
tive. Plays  of  this  nature  occasionally  succeed, 
as  in  the  case  of  Pomander  Walk  and  The  Passing 
of  the  Third  Floor  Back.  Plays  of  strong  plot  and 
illogical  characterization — excepting  sheer  melo- 
drama and  farce — succeed  more  rarely.  Indeed, 
right  portraiture  of  human  nature  is  the  chief 
requisite  of  true  drama;  though,  of  course,  the 
great  plays  are  those  in  which  irreproachable 
characterization  is  joined  with  interesting  action. 
The  usual  recipe  for  playwriting  is  to  let  the 

story  come  out  of  the  characters,  rather  than  to 

25 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

fit  the  characters  into  the  plot.  The  aspiring 
author  is  told  to  get  hold  of  a  set  of  human  beings, 
to  imagine  the  things  possible  in  their  lives  to- 
gether, and  to  select  only  what  is  dramatic  from 
the  material  thus  gathered,  presenting  it  in  the 
order  of  climax.  Whether  this  course  is  always 
followed  by  successful  dramatists  may  perhaps  be 
doubted.  The  characters  in  Hamlet  impress  us 
first  of  all  with  their  amazing  truth  to  life  and  their 
utter  consistency;  and  yet  it  is  more  than  likely 
that  Shakespeare  took  the  plot  of  his  play  ready 
made  and  fitted  his  figures  into  it.  As  much  may 
be  said  for  many  other  dramatic  masterpieces. 
After  all,  the  right  inter-relation  of  characters  and 
story  is  the  prime  essential,  and  the  manner  of 
attaining  it  is  of  slight  importance. 

The  chief  medium  through  which  the  dramatist 
unfolds  both  characters  and  action  is  dialogue. 
Dialogue,  however,  is  not  the  only  medium.  Some- 
times it  is  entirely  lacking,  in  pantomime,  such  as 
UEnfant  Prodigue  or  Sumurun,  without  corre- 
sponding loss  of  dramatic  effectiveness.  Often 
the  big  moments  in  the  action  or  the  character- 
ization of  a  play  are  indebted  solely  to  pantomime 
26 


DEFINITIONS 

for  their  revelation.  On  the  stage,  as  elsewhere, 
actions  speak  louder  than  words.  Miss  Kite,  in 
The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor  Back,  stealthily 
exchanging  her  half-consumed  candles  for  the  new 
ones  in  her  landlady's  candlesticks,  tells  us  more 
about  her  character  than  some  pages  of  conver- 
sation could  do.  At  the  same  time,  her  action  has 
graphically  revealed  the  nature  of  the  boarding- 
house  and  also  of  Mary  Jane.  In  the  same  manner, 
the  manoeuvring  of  the  various  boarders  for  the 
easy  chair  and  the  evening  paper  is  revelatory  of 
character  to  a  degree  beyond  the  power  of  mere 
words.  The  successful  dramatist,  like  the  actor, 
must  know  the  value  of  gesture,  facial  expression, 
eloquent  silences,  piercing  glances,  and  all  the 
many  resources  of  skilful  and  telling  pantomime. 
This  is,  in  fact,  chief  among  the  characteristics 
that  distinguish  the  drama  from  literature  pure 
and  simple,  and  that  make  the  stage  a  source  of 
emotions  not  obtainable  from  the  printed  page. 
Charles  Lamb's  paradox,  declaring  that  the  actual 
performance  of  Shakespeare's  plays  detracts  from 
their  potency,  must  be  ascribed  to  the  perversity 

of  a  Shavian  moment.    Dumas  fils  is  nearer  the 

27 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

truth  when  he  relates  how  a  word,  a  look,  a  gesture, 
a  silence,  a  purely  atmospheric  combination,  often 
held  him  spellbound. 

In  true  drama,  both  pantomime  and  dialogue 
should  contribute,  not  only  to  the  characterization, 
but  also  to  the  action.  The  ideal  dialogue  is  that 
in  which  every  line  is  both  characteristic  of  the 
speaker  and  accelerating  to  the  plot.  To  be  all 
this,  dialogue  must  obviously  be  selective  and 
condensed.  It  must  be  of  ninety-nine  per  cent, 
efficiency.  There  must  be  no  excess,  no  waste,  no 
dead  timber.  The  language  chosen,  indeed,  must 
be  more  than  merely  denotative;  it  must  be  con- 
notative,  highly  charged  with  appropriate  and 
illuminating  suggestion.  Hamlet's  first  speech, 
"A  little  more  than  kin,  and  less  than  kind," 
characterizes  the  speaker,  adds  its  mite  to  the 
exposition,  and  so  to  a  certain  extent  advances  the 
story.  Where  there  is  this  kind  of  dialogue  mar- 
ried to  concrete  illustrative  action,  there  is  the 
foundation  for  the  highest  dramatic  achievement. 
Augustus  Thomas  would  require  of  every  bit  of 
dialogue  that  it  should  either  "advance  the  story, 

promote  the  characterization,  or  get  a  laugh."    A 
28 


DEFINITIONS 

speech  that  does  all  three  is  at  least  three  times 
better  than  a  speech  that  accomplishes  only  one 
of  these  aims. 

A  word  in  passing  on  this  important  subject  of 
"getting  a  laugh"  in  the  theatre.  If  the  sensa- 
tions accompanying  laughter  are  emotional — 
some  psychologists  still  regard  this  as  a  moot 
point — then  the  theatre  manifestly  fulfils  its  prime 
function  when  it  produces  a  general  cachinnation. 
Meredith  tells  us  that  true  comedy  awakens 
*' thoughtful  laughter";  and  we  can  hardly  deny 
the  activity  of  the  intellect  in  that  form  of  humor 
which  transcends  the  mere  spontaneous  guffawing 
of  the  rustic  at  the  antics  of  the  slapstick  clown. 
One  of  Mr.  Shaw's  critics,  in  Fanny's  First  Play, 
expresses  his  contempt  for  the  ''crude  mediaeval 
psychology  of  hearts  and  brains,  this  Shakespeare 
livers  and  wits";  perhaps  we  should  learnedly 
assume  a  similar  attitude.  At  all  events,  the 
unthinking  laughter  at  mere  horseplay  is  the  least 
important  kind,  if  the  most  readily  excited.  In 
the  difference  between  thoughtless  and  thoughtful 
laughter  lies  the  distinction  between  low  and  high 
comedy. 

29 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

The  French  speak  of  a  laugh-producing  element 
in  the  drama  as  a  mot,  and  they  differentiate  three 
principal  kinds.  A  simple  witticism,  merely 
adorning  the  dialogue  and  amusing  in  itself,  is 
termed  a  mot  d'esprit.  A  mot  de  situation  owes 
its  amusing  quality  to  its  peculiar  position  in  the 
play;  it  would  not  be  funny  in  itself,  if  uttered 
elsewhere.  The  mot  de  caractere  provokes  laughter 
by  expressing  something  humorous  in  the  indi- 
viduality of  the  person  that  utters  it.  Thus,  when 
the  rude  mechanicals  are  presenting  Pynamus  and 
Thishe,  we  smile  at  the  wit  of  Theseus  as  he  ob- 
serves that  ''Wall,"  having  been  cursed,  and 
' '  being  sensible, ' '  should  curse  back.  Next  moment 
we  laugh  at  Bottom's  naive  explanation  that  he 
was  merely  delivering  ''Thisby's"  cue,  because 
the  weaver  thus  reveals  his  own  amusing  simplic- 
ity. The  first  is  mot  d' esprit;  the  second,  mot  de 
caractere.  On  the  other  hand,  when  the  bewitched 
Titania  awakes  and  becomes  instantly  enamored 
of  the  grotesque  Bottom  in  the  ass's  head,  our 
merriment  is  provoked  by  neither  witticism  nor 
character  revelation,  but  by  a  ludicrous  situation. 
Obviously,  the  mot  d^esprit  is  the  least,  the  mot 
30 


DEFINITIONS 

de  caracthre  the  most  essentially  dramatic.  Your 
playwright  may  readily  be  conceived  of  as  collect- 
ing specimens  of  the  former  in  a  convenient  note- 
book, for  use  wherever  they  will  fit  in.  The  mot 
de  situation^  however,  and  especially  the  mot  de 
caract^re,  must  grow  out  of  the  very  stuff  of  drama 
itself.  It  seems  more  than  likely  that  much  of 
the  pleasure  accompanying  laughter  springs  from 
the  self-satisfaction  evoked  by  one's  readiness  to 
grasp  a  point,  to  ''see  the  joke.''  Ability  along 
this  line  at  least  causes  a  pleasing  sense  of  superi- 
ority that  tickles  the  vanity.  Perhaps  the  clever 
laugh-getter  should  always  carefully  take  into 
account  this  element  of  the  weakness  of  human 
nature,  and  build  his  'mot,  whether  of  wit,  situa- 
tion, or  character,  accordingly. 

No  chapter  of  definitions  for  the  drama  should 
close  without  reference  to  the  conventions  of  the 
stage.  The  theatre,  to  begin  with,  is  a  place  of 
illusion  based  on  many  conventions.  Since  we 
could  not  see  through  it,  the  fourth  wall  of  the 
room  exhibited  on  the  stage  has  been  removed, 
but  we  assume  that  it  is  still  there.    The  actors 

usually  face  one  way,  "down,"  that  is,  toward  the 

31 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

footlights;  though  real  persons  in  a  real  room  would 
do  nothing  of  the  sort.  When  they  speak,  they 
raise  their  voices  above  the  customary  pitch,  yet 
we  all  pretend  not  to  notice  this  artifice.  The  suc- 
cess of  the  whole  enterprise,  in  fact,  depends  upon 
the  readiness  of  the  audience  to  co-operate  with 
the  players  in  assuming  that  such  and  such  nonen- 
tities exist  and  that  certain  other  obvious  realities, 
like  the  property  man  in  the  Chinese  drama,  have 
been  temporarily  excluded  from  the  category  of 
being. 

Moreover,  the  play  itself,  as  well  as  the  theatre, 
is  utterly  dependent  upon  a  set  of  acknowledged 
conventions.  It  is  a  picture  of  life,  but  not  a  mere 
photograph.  The  principle  of  selection  operates 
throughout.  The  trivial  is  omitted,  and  only  the 
vital  is  allowed  to  remain.  Tautologies  and  irrele- 
vancies,  which  make  up  so  much  more  than  half 
of  real  life,  are  stripped  away  from  both  action 
and  dialogue  on  the  stage,  regardless  of  the  futile 
efforts  of  photographers  like  Granville  Barker  to 
include  them.  The  non-essential  has  no  place  in 
the  drama:   we  merely  agree  not  to  note  its  helpful 

absence. 
32 


DEFINITIONS 

All  the  conventions,  all  these  relationships 
between  players  and  audience,  have  been  much 
influenced  by  the  development  of  the  theatre 
itself.  As  is  well  known,  in  its  evolution  the  play- 
house has  had  three  or  four  principal  forms.  In 
the  roofless  Elizabethan  theatre,  the  stage  was  a 
bare  platform  projecting  into  the  midst  of  the 
audience.  The  actors,  spouting  their  scarce- 
interrupted  poetic  narratives,  were  almost  sur- 
rounded by  spectators.  The  tennis-court  theatre 
of  MoUere,  although  the  stage  was  placed  at  one 
end  of  the  room,  was  small  and  ^'intimate,"  with 
free  passage  between  platform  and  parquet.  As 
for  the  huge  Drury  Lane  of  Sheridan's  time,  with 
its  broad-arched  proscenium,  its  lamplit  apron 
swept  far  out  into  the  auditorium.  To-day  the 
drama  is  set  in  a  brilliantly  illuminated  picture- 
frame,  from  which,  except  in  the  case  of  ''freak" 
performances  like  Oliver  Goldsmith,  Sumurun,  or 
The  Royal  Box,  the  players  never  emerge. 

However,  whether  or  not  in  our  day  the  actors 
and  the  audience  ever  come  into  such  close  per- 
sonal contact  as  of  yore,  their  relationship  remains 

vital  and  established.    The  fundamental  is,  always, 
3  33 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

that  those  who  live  to  please  must  please  to  live; 
and  the  players  never  please,  nor  are  the  spectators 
ever  satisfied,  except  when  there  is  full  co-operation 
between  the  two.  The  drama  is  an  essentially 
democratic  institution;  aristocratic  Weimar,  like 
all  other  such  experiments,  was  a  failure.  Author, 
manager,  and  actor  find  it  the  chief  part  of  their 
business  to  organize  the  whole  mass  of  playgoers 
into  a  vital  and  functioning  audience.  As  Pro- 
fessor Brander  Matthews  puts  it,  the  playwright 
and  his  coadjutors  ''must  try  to  find  the  greatest 
common  denominator  of  the  throng."  The  basis 
of  the  co-operative  relationship  is  supplied  by  the 
many  tacit  conventions  of  the  theatre  upon  which 
is  built  up  the  essential  illusion  of  reality. 


34 


II 

REALISM  AND  THE  "LITERARY"  DRAMA 

PRACTICALLY  aU  fiction,  from  the  begin- 
ning, has  been  made  up  of  the  struggles 
of  a  brave  hero,  who  loves  a  fair  heroine, 
and  who  is  constantly  being  thwarted  by  a  deep- 
dyed  villain.  It  has  been  so  in  the  drama,  as 
in  the  novel,  the  epic,  and  the  short  story.  The 
evolution  of  these  forms  has  proceeded  apace, 
without  the  loss  of  either  of  these  three  sine  qua 
nons.  There  has  been,  however,  a  distinct  change  in 
the  nature  of  these  characters,  particularly  of  the 
protagonist.  The  hero  of  olden  times  was  a  miracle- 
worker.  He  balked  at  no  obstacle;  and,  though 
delayed,  of  course,  long  enough  to  furnish  forth 
five  acts,  he  always  won  a  final  and  glorious  tri- 
umph, even  if  in  death.  His  bravery,  his  audacity, 
and  his  resources  were,  as  a  rule,  entirely  super- 
human. Naturally  enough,  he  spoke  a  language 
appropriately  elevated  above  the  conamonplace. 
He  was,  of  course,  an  aristocrat  living  in  aristo- 
cratic surroundings. 

35 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

But  times  change,  and  the  inevitable  effect  of 
the  rise  of  democracy  was  the  depression  of  the 
hero.  When  it  was  demonstrated  that  in  real  life 
the  average  man  is  the  true  hero,  the  hero  quickly 
became  an  average  man  upon  the  boards.  Ibsen 
portrays  ordinary  people  and  everyday  life.  The 
tragedy  written  to-day  we  scarcely  recognize  with- 
out the  purple  pall.  It  requires  an  effort  even  to 
classify  Ghosts  with  (Edipus  the  King,  much  more 
to  admit  that  The  Easiest  Way  and  Macbeth  are 
specimens  of  the  same  genre.  Yet  they  are  all 
tragedy,  depicting  the  violent  yet  unsuccessful 
struggle  of  human  beings  against  impossible  odds. 
The  station  of  the  struggler  and  the  circumstances 
of  the  contest  alone  have  changed.  As  Monsieur 
Maeterlinck  expresses  it : 

"Consider  the  drama  that  actually  stands  for 

the  reality  of  our  time,  as  Greek  drama  stood  for 

Greek  reality,  and  the  drama  of  the  Renaissance 

for  the  reality  of  the  Renaissance.    Its  scene  is  a 

modem  house;  it  passes  between  men  and  women 

of  to-day.    The  names  of  the  invisible  protagonists 

— the  passions  and  ideas — are  the  same,  more  or 

less,  as  of  old.     We  see  love,  hatred,  ambition, 
36 


LITERARY      DRAMA 

jealousy,  envy,  greed;  the  sense  of  justice  and  the 
idea  of  duty;  pity,  goodness,  devotion,  piety, 
selfishness,  vanity,  pride,  etc.  But,  although  the 
names  have  remained  the  same,  how  great  is  the 
difference  we  find  in  the  aspect  and  quality,  the  ex- 
tent and  influence,  of  these  ideal  actors!  Of  all 
their  ancient  weapons,  not  one  is  left  them,  not 
one  of  the  marvellous  moments  of  olden  days.  It 
is  seldom  that  cries  are  heard  now;  bloodshed  is 
rare,  and  tears  are  not  often  seen.  It  is  in  a 
small  room,  round  a  table,  close  to  the  fire,  that 
the  joys  and  sorrows  of  mankind  are  decided.  We 
suffer  or  make  others  suffer;  we  love,  we  die,  there 
in  our  comer;  and  it  were  the  strangest  chance 
should  a  door  or  a  window  suddenly,  for  an  in- 
stant, fly  open  beneath  the  pressure  of  extraordi- 
nary despair  or  rejoicing." 

This  is,  perhaps,  an  exaggerated  statement  of 
modem  conditions,  fitting  somewhat  more  closely 
into  Maeterlinck's  scheme  of  things  than  into  the 
general  one.  And  yet  it  emphasizes  effectively 
the  great  change  that  has  come  over  the  drama 
since   Richardson    and    Fielding,    Rousseau   and 

Diderot  set  forth  their  doctrine  of  the  democracy 

37 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

of  fiction  and  the  drama.  With  drama  down  from 
the  pedestal,  the  protagonist,  seen  at  close  range, 
proves  an  ordinary  mortal,  differing  only  from 
his  fellows  in  that  he  is  temporarily  singled  out 
by  the  spotlight.  We  have  cited  Shakespeare 
as  illustrating  the  old  aristocratic  idea;  and  yet 
Hamlet  is,  broadly  speaking,  a  modern  hero.  Intro- 
spection is  essentially  destructive  of  heroism.  Be- 
sides, Hamlet  is  only  heroic,  like  the  rest  of  us, 
by  most  infrequent  fits  and  starts. 

Literary  changes  are  for  the  most  part  revolu- 
tionary and  extreme.  From  the  old  romantic, 
miracle-working  dragon-slayer  and  lightning-defier, 
we  have  passed  abruptly  to  the  helpless  and  pitiable 
bourgeois  uncomprehendingly  foiled  by  an  un- 
reasonable fate.  The  protagonist  no  longer  fights 
with  dragons;  he  "fights  with  microbes."  The  old 
simplicity  of  life  has  forever  passed.  Men  can 
no  longer  absolutely  determine  the  logic  of  events. 
Instead,  the  complexity  of  the  workings  of  the 
law  of  cause  and  effect,  in  modern  knowledge,  grows 
apparently  more  baffling  day  by  day.  Naturally, 
poetic  justice,  with  all  its  inherent  satisfactoriness, 

is  no  longer  pre-eminent,  even  in  fiction,  since  it  is 
38 


LITERARY      DRAMA 

mostly  inoperative  in  life.  It  would  seem  that  the 
world  has  turned  out  to  be,  after  all,  a  world  of 
triviality,  and  that  little  things  make  up  the  real 
comedy  and  tragedy  of  existence. 

The  dominant  artistic  note  in  a  material  age 
like  our  own  is  inevitably  the  note  of  realism. 
Realism  has  transformed  modem  literature,  just 
as  science  and  materialistic  philosophy  have  trans- 
fonned  modern  life.  The  drama,  once  a  twin 
sister  of  epic  poetry,  is  now  divorced  from  litera- 
ture in  the  old-time  sense  of  that  word.  Scholars 
and  critics  often  disagree  as  to  the  actual  relation- 
ship between  the  drama  and  literature.  It  appears, 
from  the  reading  of  many  discussions,  that  there 
is  much  drama  that  is  drama,  and  a  quantity  of 
drama  that  is  really  only  literature — ^but  very 
little  that  is  both. 

After  all,  the  fundamental  distinction  of  litera- 
ture is  form.  Flawless  structure,  charming  style, 
and  sincere,  perfect,  individual  treatment  of  the 
subject-matter  are  the  qualities  that  differentiate 
literature  from  mere  writing;  and,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  there  is  much  literature  that  is  seriously 

lacking  in  the  element  of  structiu-e.     The  Two 

39 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

Gentlemen  of  Verona,  even,  among  plays,  or  Lovers 

Labour's  Lost,  is  structurally  deficient,  yet  poetic 

and  ''literary.'^     Style  alone  often  distinguishes 

literature.    If  it  be  so  in  the  case  of  the  drama,  in 

what  style  should  one  write  a  literary  play? 

You  must  have  a  good  plot,  consistent,  logical, 

interesting,  climactic.     You  must  have  this  plot 

and  the  characterization — ordinarily — expressed  in 

dialogue.    But  the  characterization  determines  the 

form  or  the  style  of  the  dialogue.  Your  characters, 

if  they  are  worth  while,  must  say  characteristic 

things  in  characteristic  language.     To  give  this 

language  any  unnatural  elevation  or  adornment 

would  be  to  insure  failure  in  the  realistic  drama 

of  to-day.     Apparently,   then,   there  is  nothing 

that  can  be  done  with  a  modern  realistic  play 

that  can  essentially  make  it  anything  more  than 

good  acting  drama,  and  that  can  carry  it  on  over 

into  the  realm  of  ''literature."     Of  course,  stage 

conversation  is  highly  artificial  and  not  actually 

real  at  all;  it  is  a  shorn  and  trimmed  verbiage,  but 

yet  shorn  and  trimmed  with  a  view  to  the  closest 

possible  approximation  of  real-life  talk. 

There  is  a  wide  difference  between  the  modem 
40 


LITERARY      DRAMA 

play  and  the  poetic  drama,  just  as  there  so  often 
is  a  wide  difference  between  a  play  and  the  opera 
based  on  it.  Opera  is  drama  with  dialogue  in 
music.  Poetic  drama  is  drama  with  dialogue  in 
poetry.  The  modem  realistic  play  is  drama  with 
dialogue  in  what  seems  to  be  the  language  of  real 
life.  The  drama  is,  indeed,  an  art  in  itself,  one 
which  generally  calls  to  its  aid  several  other  arts, 
but  nowadays  only  rarely  the  art  of  letters,  or  at 
least  of  poetry.  Now,  poetry  thrives  chiefly  on 
idealism,  and  the  real  and  the  ideal  seldom  har- 
monize. Occasionally  we  find  a  sporadic  effort  to 
combine  for  the  stage  the  poetic  and  the  realistic, 
as  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Hagedom's  Five  in  the 
Morning;  but,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  stage, 
such  attempts  are  significant  only  as  failures.  Mr. 
Percy  Mackaye  and  some  of  our  other  writers  for 
the  stage  whose  gifts  are  in  the  direction  rather 
of  the  poetic  than  of  the  dramatic,  in  adorning 
their  plays  with  rhetorical  ornament,  usually  suc- 
ceed in  producing  at  best  only  "closet  drama." 
Such  plays  are  often  lyric,  idyllic,  epic, — but 
rarely  dramatic. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  the  sense  of  "poetic," 

41 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

there  has  been  little  or  no  strictly  "literary" 
English  drama  for  nearly  two  hundred  years.  At 
the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  such 
drama  still  survived  in  the  works  of  Otway,  Rowe, 
and  Dryden.  Within  fifty  years,  however,  it  was 
extinct;  spectacle  and  opera  had  replaced  it.  Dr. 
Johnson,  in  1747,  explained  the  transition  in  the 
prologue  he  wrote  for  Garrick  to  deliver  at  the 
opening  of  Drury  Lane: 

Then,  crushed  by  rules  and  weakened  as  refined, 
For  years  the  power  of  Tragedy  declined: 
From  bard  to  bard  the  frigid  caution  crept, 
Till  declamation  roared  whilst  passion  slept. 
Yet  still  did  Virtue  deign  the  stage  to  tread; 
Philosophy  remained  though  Nature  fled. 
But,  forced  at  length  her  ancient  reign  to  quit. 
She  saw  great  Faustus  lay  the  ghost  of  wit: 
Exulting  folly  hailed  the  joyful  day. 
And  pantomime  and  song  confirmed  her  sway. 

In  other  words,  the  excesses  of  pseudo-classicism 

finally  squeezed  the  life-blood  out  of  the  poetic 

drama,  leaving  it  a  dry,  dead  husk,  which  music 

and  the  spectacular  quickly  swept  aside. 

Meanwhile,  the  writing  of  plays  did  not  cease. 
43 


LITERARY      DRAMA 

Instead  of  poetic  drama,  however,  acting  drama 
was  produced — plays  intended  solely  to  be  per- 
formed, not  at  all  to  be  read.  These  plays  drew 
upon  the  scene-painter  and  the  costumer,  the 
musician  and  the  producer,  as  well  as  upon  the 
actor,  for  their  completeness.  Literature  was  not 
their  object,  though  occasionally  it  was  their 
accessory.  But  good  plays,  as  has  been  suggested, 
might  be  reduced  to  pantomime  without  losing 
their  dramatic  quality.  The  litterateur  and  the 
playwright  have,  in  the  past,  sometimes  been  com- 
bined in  one;  but  they  are  usually  separate  and 
distinct  to-day.  History  teems  with  examples  of 
literary  men  who  failed  regularly  at  writing  drama, 
and  dramatists  wholly  devoid  of  literary  gifts. 
To  belittle  either  one  for  lacking  the  abilities  of 
the  other  is  beside  the  point.  Such  a  policy  argues 
confusion  in  the  mind  of  the  critic.  The  modem 
realistic  drama  has  been  divorced  absolutely  from 
literature,  at  least  in  the  former  and  usual  sense 
of  that  term.  Moreover,  the  two  cannot  be  re- 
united without  distinct  loss,  if  not  disaster. 

This  is  no  reason  why  play  reading  should  not 

be  pleasurable.    But  modern  plays  should  be  read 

d3 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

as  plays,  with  the  eye  of  the  imagination  fixed 
upon  their  actual  performance,  and  not  measured 
by  old-fashioned  literary  standards.  The  seven- 
teenth century  spectator  relished  the  union  of 
rhetoric  with  the  theatrical;  he  felt  no  resentment 
at  the  mingling  of  the  epic,  the  lyric,  and  the 
didactic  with  the  dramatic.  Many  plays  which, 
in  our  own  day,  are  considered  strictly  "closet 
dramas," — ^that  is,  plays  for  reading  only, — ^were, 
or  would  have  been,  acceptable  upon  the  stage  of 
two  hundred  years  ago.  At  the  theatre  to-day 
we  want  drama;  in  fact,  we  will  pause  for  little 
else,  except  it  be  laughable,  certainly  not  long  for 
mere  rhetoric  or  even  for  poetry. 

It  would  seem  that  all  this  must  be  seK-evident; 
and  yet  there  is  much  futile  controversy,  based 
chiefly  upon  loose  definitions  of  the  word  "litera- 
ture." Somebody  is  perennially  harking  back  to 
the  "palmy  days,"  and  regretting  that  our  stage 
no  longer  re-echoes  solely  to  blank  verse.  Never- 
theless, even  Shakespeare,  whenever  produced 
to-day,  is  almost  invariably  shorn  of  many  de- 
scriptive and  reflective  passages.     Shakespeare, 

indeed,  lives  upon  the  modem  stage  because  his 
44 


LITERARY      DRAMA 

dramatic  power  is  too  great  to  be  quenched  by 
his  poetry.  Of  course,  one  realizes  that  poetry 
and  drama  are  not  in  conflict  in  Shakespeare — 
that  they  co-operate  and  heighten  each  other, 
indeed.  However,  much  this  same  relationship 
is  maintained  in  the  dramatic  work  of  countless 
other  authors,  whose  plays  we  cannot  endure  on 
the  stage  to-day.  There  is  co-operation  between 
the  dramatic  and  the  poetic  in  Cato  and  Sophonisba, 
in  Tennyson's  Queen  Mary  and  Shelley's  The  Cend, 
in  Stafford  and  A  Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon  and  In  a 
Balcony;  but,  in  each  of  these  plays,  as  in  scores 
of  others  almost  equally  valuable  from  the  literary 
standpoint,  the  quahty  that  makes  them  readable 
quite  overshadows  such  actable  possibihties  as 
they  may  possess.  While  poetry  flows,  too  often 
action  lags.  And  always  '' literary"  speech  is 
incompatible  with  the  effect  of  realism  demanded 
upon  our  stage  to-day. 

As  for  the  oft-reiterated  declaration  that  "the 
real  literary  value  of  a  play  depends  upon  the  sym- 
metry and  strength  of  its  skeleton  and  the  vitality 
of  its  flesh  and  blood,"  rather  than  upon  mere 

"verbal  felicity  in  dialogue,  a  beauty  that  is  only 

45 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

skin-deep,"  this  dictum  simply  quibbles  with  the 
definition  of  "literature."  In  a  large  measure  it 
disregards  the  fact  that  the  same  achievements 
that  make  certain  novels,  short  stories,  essays,  and 
poems  "literature"  rather  than  mere  writing  do 
not  make  a  play  necessarily  the  best  of  drama.  To 
say  that  The  Thunderbolt  is  better  dramatic  litera- 
ture than  Chantecler,  "because  it  is  more  pro- 
foundly and  consistently  imagined, — in  other  words, 
more  real," — ^is  plainly  to  accept  the  term  "lit- 
erature" in  one  significance,  whereas  a  large 
proportion  of  critics  take  it  in  another  and  entirely 
different  sense.  The  best  way  out  of  the  difficulty 
is  to  acknowledge  what  grows  more  obvious  day 
by  day,  that  drama,  perhaps  beginning  in,  or  at 
least  early  combining  with,  literature,  has  evolved 
into  a  separate  art,  still  relying  on  literary  elements, 
doubtless,  but  by  no  means  exclusively,  or  even 
principally. 

Of  course,  the  chief  factor  in  this  evolution  of 
the  drama  into  a  distinct  and  separate  art  has  been 
our  latter-day  realism,  and  a  word  concerning  it 
will  not  be  out  of  place  in  this  discussion.    Like 

all  other  great  literary  movements,  the  realistic  is 
46 


LITERARY      DRAMA 

of  a  reactionary  nature.  Undoubtedly,  it  has 
arisen,  in  part,  as  a  recoil  from  excessive  romantic 
unreality.  Has  it,  in  its  turn,  become  excessive? 
We  know,  for  instance,  that  the  stage  in  Shake- 
speare's day  was  a  bare  platform,  which  the  imagi- 
nation of  the  spectator  turned  into  any  scene  at 
will.  To-day  everything  possible  is  done  to  relieve 
the  audience's  imagination  of  this  responsibility. 
The  tendency  is  distinctly  away  from  the  merely 
presentative  and  nearer  to  the  representative.  In 
short,  since  Ibsen  at  least,  the  theatre's  aim  has 
been  the  closest  approximation  of  life. 

As  a  result  of  this,  infinite  pains  are  now 
lavished  upon  settings  and  costumes  and  properties, 
to  make  them  accurate  and  complete  and  real. 
The  stage  is  boxed  in  with  side-walls  and  ceiling. 
"Practical"  doors  and  windows  and  stairways  are 
more  or  less  solidified.  Costume  books  are  care- 
fully followed  for  historical  accuracy.  Real  meals 
are  served  to  players,  who  actually  eat  and  drink. 
Real  water  tinkles  over  realistic  stones.  Real 
horses  and  automobiles  are  pressed  into  service. 
The  knocked-out  front  wall  of  the  footlights  is 

even  sometimes  seriously  treated  as  if  it  actually 

47 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

existed.  And  the  actor  himself  makes  an  earnest 
endeavor  to  say  and  do  things  on  the  stage  as  they 
are  said  and  done  in  real  life.  Yet,  in  spite  of  all 
this  conscientious  striving  to  make  the  stage 
approximate  life,  the  theatre  remains  a  place  of 
illusion  based  on  many  conventions. 

There  is  a  current  anecdote  in  point  which 
relates  how  once  Sir  Henry  Irving  at  rehearsal 
upbraided  a  stage  hand  for  the  poor  imitation  of 
thunder  the  latter  had  produced.  '^ Please,  sir," 
replied  the  man,  "that  wasn't  me  that  made  the 
noise.  It's  the  real  storm  out-doors:  it's  ragin' 
so  'ard  I  couldn't  'ear  you  tell  me  when  to  begin." 

All  sides  of  stage  imitation  of  reality  could  be 
similarly  illustrated.  The  Occidental,  visiting  for 
the  first  time  the  Chinese  theatre,  finds  there  much 
seriousness  that  is  to  him  laughably  absurd.  He 
is  intensely  amused  that  a  man  astride  a  broom- 
stick is  accepted  for  a  cavalier  on  a  charger,  with- 
out the  least  strain  upon  the  risibilities  of  the 
Oriental  audience.  Such  a  convention  is,  indeed, 
to  the  Western  mind  ridiculous.  Shakespeare 
himself  keenly  realized  the  absurdity  of  the  stage 
hobby-horses  of  his  own  day,  and  sensibly  avoided 


LITERARY      DRAMA 

them,  with  obvious  gains  in  artistic  effectiveness. 
Yet  it  is  equally  undeniable  that,  if  some  tran- 
scendent superman,  say  from  Mars  or  Jupiter,  as 
far  advanced  beyond  us  in  stagecraft  as  we  are 
advanced  beyond  the  Chinese,  were  to  visit  for  the 
first  time  the  most  modern  of  our  New  York  or 
London  or  Paris  playhouses,  he  would  undoubtedly 
find  in  their  accepted  conventions  much  matter  to 
make  his  superior  lungs  tickle  o'  the  sere.  Indeed, 
they  must  crow  like  chanticleer  at  scores  of  stage 
tricks,  stage  surroundings,  and  stage  illusions 
based  on  a  traditional  platform  of  mutual  agree- 
ment between  actors  and  audience. 

In  other  words,  the  approximation  of  life  upon 
the  stage  is,  at  the  very  height  of  our  twentieth 
century  reahsm,  only  an  approximation.  We  stiU 
are,  and  by  the  very  nature  of  things  always  will 
be,  far  from  presenting  in  the  theatre  actual,  un- 
modified cross-sections  of  life.  And  we  are  also 
still  capable  of  supplying  imaginatively  almost  all 
the  details  which  modem  scene-painters,  stage 
carpenters,  and  property  men  are  so  assiduous  in 
representing  for  us.    This  fact  is  evidenced  by  the 

success  of  recent  revivals  of  the  Ehzabethan  stage 
4  49 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

conditions,  as  well  as  in  the  reformative  efforts 
of  Professor  Max  Reinhardt  and  of  Mr.  Gordon 
Craig.  Significant  also  is  the  effect  produced  by 
the  pseudo-Chinese  play,  The  Yellow  Jacket,  lately 
presented  with  that  Oriental  lack  of  solicitude  for 
the  realistic  which  so  closely  parallels  the  custom 
of  the  Shakespearean  stage.  In  this  play  a  typical 
Chinese  story  is  told.  Meanwhile,  the  property 
man,  wearing  black  to  signify  that  he  is  invisible, 
in  bored  languor  smokes  his  cigarette,  dusts  the 
furniture,  reads  a  newspaper,  and  eats  rice  with 
the  aid  of  chopsticks,  while  the  actors,  of  course 
ignoring  him,  proceed  with  the  unfolding  of  the 
naive  narrative.  Everything  is  "make-believe'^: 
horses,  trees,  chariots,  mountains,  rivers,  and  all. 
A  few  chairs  piled  together  constitute  a  boat,  in 
which  hero  and  heroine  float  idyllically  down  a 
flowery  stream,  propelled  by  two  boatmen,  who 
rhythmically  pole  the  air  with  bamboo  sticks.  Of 
course,  all  this  was  primarily  meant  to  amuse. 
But  sooner  or  later  the  spectators  forgot  how 
incongruous  it  all  was  and  found  themselves  ac- 
cepting as  reality  what  was  so  slightly  suggested 

to  their  imaginations.    It  merely  serves  to  demon- 
50 


LITERARY      DRAMA 

strate  anew  that  the  best  m  this  kind  are  but 
shadows,  and  the  worst  are  no  worse,  if  the  spec- 
tator's imagination  amend  them. 

After  all,  then,  what  is  the  ultimate  value  of 
this  realism  which  has  been  so  painstakingly 
acquired?  Among  the  changes  it  has  wrought  in 
modem  stagecraft  is  the  elimination  of  the  solilo- 
quy and  the  aside.  Ibsen  is  declared  to  have 
sounded  their  death-knell.  They  are  now  very 
rare,  at  all  events,  though  they  do  occasionally 
creep  up  into  the  light  again.  One  of  the  successful 
younger  English  playwrights  confesses  that  he 
often  writes  an  entire  scene  merely  to  convey  a 
bit  of  information  that  could  be  given  to  the 
audience  in  three  lines  of  monologue.  Doubtless, 
most  playwrights  of  to-day  could  be  induced  to 
make  similar  admissions.  But  is  it  really  worth 
while? 

Perhaps  the  gist  of  the  matter  lies  in  the  fact 

that  the  soliloquy  and  the  aside  are  literary,  rather 

than  realistically  dramatic,  by  nature.    The  Abb^ 

d'Aubignac,  in  his  Pradique  du  ThMtre,  declares 

that  "it  is  sometimes  very  pleasant  to  see  a  man 

upon  the  stage  lay  bare  his  heart  and  speak  boldly 

51 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

of  his  most  secret  thoughts,  explain  his  designs, 
and  give  vent  to  all  that  his  passion  suggests." 
The  stage  is  deeply  indebted  to  this  method  of 
self-revelation:  Hamlet  and  Orgon,  lago,  and 
even  Brand,  have  in  this  facile  manner  let  the 
audience  into  the  secret,  not  only  of  their  plans 
but  of  their  souls.  But  in  the  modern  realistic 
drama  the  soliloquy  and  the  aside  are  discarded  as 
over-artificial  devices. 

However,  since  upon  the  stage  all  else  is  ancil- 
lary to  human  character  in  conflict,  it  is  perhaps 
somewhat  difficult  to  say  why,  if  some  yards  of 
painted  cloth  may  satisfactorily  represent  the 
solid  wall  of  a  house  or  the  ethereality  of  blue  sky, 
some  dozens  of  words  spoken  in  assumed  privacy 
may  not  equally  well  represent  unspoken  thought. 
People  in  real  life  do  sometimes  soliloquize  briefly. 
The  English  playwright  before  alluded  to  adds 
that  he  never  permits  his  characters  to  speak  more 
than  ''the  three  or  four  words  that  are  wrung  from 
isolated  individuals  in  real  life  under  stress  of 
strong  emotion."  Just  exactly  what  the  extent 
of  such  real  life  monologues  may  be,  it  seems,  is 

difficult  to  determine.   As  a  matter  of  fact,  sticklers 
52 


LITERARY      DRAMA 

for  realism  have  utilized,  first,  the  confidant,  that 

convenient  being  into  whose  ears  a  character  may 

loudly  pour  the  information  he  intends  for  the 

audience;  and,  second,  that  equally  convenient 

and  overworked  substitute,  the  telephone.     But 

these   devices,   like   the   eavesdropper   concealed 

behind  the  portieres,  are  disappearing.     On  the 

other  hand,  at  least  one  time-honored  convention, 

the  conversation  entirely  audible  to  the  spectators 

but  unheard  by  other  characters  on  the  stage,  still 

flourishes.   As  for  the  pantomime  dialogue  indulged 

in  ''up  stage '^  by  those  not  supposed  to  hear  what 

is  going  forward  nearer  the  footlights,  it  bids  fair 

to  survive  indefinitely.    Yet  both  of  these  ancient 

institutions  are  just  as  unreal  as  the  soliloquy  or 

the  aside. 

It  all  comes  back  eventually  to  the  fundamental 

fact  that  the  illusion  of  the  theatre  is  based  upon 

many  conventions.      This  was  again  illustrated 

when,   in   a  recent  elaborate   revival  of  Julius 

Ccesar,  the  conduct  of  the  mob  was  criticised.    It 

was  a  large  mob,  and  "it  responded  to  the  gestures 

of  the  orators  with  the  swift  obedience  of  an 

orchestra  to  the  beat  of  the  conductor's  baton. 

63 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

It  gesticulated  and  roared  or  subsided  into  para- 
lyzed silence  at  the  recognized  signal.  Never,  by 
any  chance,  did  any  ill-timed  ejaculation  obscure 
a  syllable  of  the  orator's  speech.  That  the  result," 
continues  the  reviewer,  "was  realistic,  in  a  sense, 
need  not  be  denied,  but  it  created  no  illusion. 
Actual  crowds  do  not  behave  in  that  way." 

Of  course  not.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  the 
utmost  achievement  of  modern  theatrical  realism, 
there  is  always  something  ridiculously  incongruous 
if  you  choose  to  regard  it  so.  The  very  unraised 
curtain  announces  it,  with  its  painted  velvet 
draperies,  its  painted  picture  frame  and  cords  and 
tassels.  And  just  behind  the  curtain  stand  the 
flat  round-painted  pillars  of  the  proscenium,  built 
of  cloth  marble.  Then  come  the  flat,  round- 
painted  canvas  trees,  the  lath-ribbed  rocks,  the 
unconvincing  grass,  the  houses  with  their  earth- 
quake totter  at  the  slamming  of  a  door,  the 
painted  books  on  the  painted  shelves,  the  painted 
bottles  in  the  painted  laboratory,  the  all  too 
obviously  painted  faces  of  the  players  themselves. 
And  then  the  lights:  the  risings  and  settings  of  sun 

and  moon!    And  how  time  flies!    The  stage  clock 
54 


LITERARY      DRAMA 

strikes  two  separate  hours  in  the  space  of  twenty 
minutes  by  your  watch.  How  amusing  we  might 
find  the  efforts  of  the  electrician  to  synchronize 
his  lowering  of  all  the  lights  with  the  player's 
extinguishing  the  single  lamp  supposedly  respon- 
sible for  the  total  illumination!  How  we  might 
titter  when  the  housemaid  so  ineffectually  pokes 
the  three  dead  logs  in  front  of  the  red  light  in  the 
fireplace!  How  we  might  giggle  and  spoil  the 
scene  even  when  Cyrano,  delirious  and  dying, 
staggers  against  the  tree  and  it  threatens  to  fall 
on  him  instanter! 

But  the  point  is,  we  do  not  laugh  at  these 
things.  We  accept  them,  we  pass  them  over  un- 
questioningly,  because  unconsciously  we  recognize 
them  as  merely  time-honored  conventions  which 
alone  make  the  illusion  of  the  theatre  possible. 
We  accept  them  because  we  realize  that  they  are 
insignificant,  that  the  human  thoughts  and  passions 
and  struggles  that  come  out  through  and  in  spite 
of  them  are  the  realities  we  are  looking  for,  that 
the  accessories  amount  to  little,  that  the  play's 
the  thing. 

It  is  probable  that,  in  any  field,  undue  emphasis 

50 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

upon  the  unimportant  brings  evil  consequences. 
We  see  this  in  our  theatre  to-day  when  we  look 
on  unconvinced  at  the  striving  after  realism  and 
wonderingly  inquire,  What  is  it?  Reality — or  just 
a  game:  to  see  how  nearly  actors,  carpenters, 
scene-painters,  and  all  can  live  up  to  certain  long- 
estabhshed  traditions  that  seek  in  vain  to  substi- 
tute for  reality?  It  is  particularly  manifest  in  the 
art  of  acting  itself.  One  evil  that  critics  like  to 
lay  at  the  door  of  the  star  system  is  the  managerial 
custom  of  presenting  a  given  player  in  an  endless 
series  of  pieces  which  only  slightly  vary  the  same 
theme  and  which  present  the  star  always  in  prac- 
tically the  same  old  part.  But  is  this  not  due  in 
large  part  to  the  craze  for  the  approximation  of 
life?  It  is  well  known  that  nowadays  when  an 
actor  is  engaged  for  a  particular  role  the  first 
question  asked  about  him  is  not,  Can  he  act?  or. 
Does  he  know  how  to  make  up?  but,  WiU  he  look 
the  part?  Now  the  range  of  parts  which  a  player 
can  ''look"  in  propria  persona  is  manifestly  limited. 
As  a  consequence,  versatility  is  hardly  at  a  pre- 
mium, and  no  more  is  the  very  art  of  acting  itself. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  are  more  than  a  few 
56 


LITERARY      DRAMA 

players  on  our  stage  to-day  who  do  not  act  at  all. 
No  matter  what  the  play  he  be  cast  in,  John  Smith, 
star,  merely  walks  through  his  part  in  it  as  John 
Smith,  yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever.  Of  course, 
his  plays  are  all  necessarily  much  of  a  muchness. 
The  personality  he  puts  over  the  footlights  is  the 
identical  personality  with  which  he  meets  his 
family  and  his  friends.  If  by  some  accident  he 
be  thrown  into  a  play  where  he  must  portray 
an  entirely  different  character,  he  finds  himself  a 
sudden  failure,  and  he  is  pronounced  miscast. 

''Dramatic  art,"  says  Mr.  A.  B.  Walkeley, 
"should  express  the  conflict  of  wills,  the  clash  of 
character  upon  character,  the  movement  and  in- 
finite variety  of  life  at  large,  not  the  idiosyncrasies 
of  this  or  that  gentleman  or  lady  who  chances  to 
be  playing  upon  the  stage  of  the  moment."  When 
the  truth  of  this  statement  comes  more  into  its 
own,  when  play  producers  take  away  the  emphasis 
from  stage  realism  and  the  approximation  of  Hfe 
and  place  it  where  it  so  much  more  properly 
belongs,  doubtless  we  shall  have  better  acting  and 
better  drama.     The  play,  being  the  thing,  will 

achieve  its  full  purpose  imthwarted.     And  we 

67 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

shall  stop  doing  on  the  stage  what  we  are  doing 
so  much  of  in  all  life  else,  and  that  is,  sacrificing 
the  truth  for  what  is  merely  fact. 

"Any  vital  school  of  drama,"  said  Mr.  Henry 
Arthur  Jones,  in  a  lecture  delivered  some  years 
ago  at  Yale  University,  "is  intimately  connected 
with  the  daily  lives  of  the  people,  and  it  is  useless 
for  Englishmen  or  Americans  to  hope  for  much 
poetry  in  their  drama  till  they  have  put  a  little 
more  into  their  lives, — that  is,  until  the  reign  of 
omnipresent,  omnipotent  commercialism  is  at  an 
end."  However,  Mr.  Jones  believes  that  our  drama 
may  again  become  literary,  even  if  there  be  no 
hope  for  the  founding  of  a  new  school  of  blank- 
verse  playwriting.  Drama  must  become  literature, 
he  says,  to  become  permanent.  And  what  he 
means  by  drama  that  is  literature  is  explained  as 
follows : 

"If  you  have  faithfully  and  searchingly  studied 
your  fellow-citizens;  if  you  have  selected  from 
amongst  them  those  characters  that  are  interesting 
in  themselves,  and  that  also  possess  an  enduring 
human  interest;  if,  in  studying  these  interesting 

personalities,  you  have  severely  selected^  from  the 
5§ 


LITERARY      DRAMA 

mass  of  their  sayings  and  doings  and  impulses, 
those  words  and  deeds  and  tendencies  which  mark 
them  at  once  as  individuals  and  as  types;  if  you 
have  then  recast  and  reimagined  all  the  materials; 
if  you  have  cunningly  shaped  them  into  a  story  of 
progressive  and  accumulative  action;  if  you  have 
done  all  this,  though  you  may  not  have  used  a 
single  word  but  what  is  spoken  in  ordinary  Ameri- 
can intercourse  to-day,  I  will  venture  to  say  that 
you  have  written  a  piece  of  live  American  litera- 
ture,— that  is,  you  have  written  something  that 
will  not  only  be  interesting  on  the  boards  of  the 
theatre,  but  that  can  be  read  with  pleasure  in 
your  library;  can  be  discussed,  argued  about, 
tasted,  and  digested  as  literature." 

In  other  words,  truly  literary  drama  is  essen- 
tially neither  poetical  nor  rhetorical,  but  simply 
good  drama — drama  raised,  as  it  were,  to  the 
nth  power.  There  is  no  reason,  then,  why  the 
reahstic  works  of  Mr.  Thomas  or  Mr.  Ade,  Sir 
Arthur  Wing  Pinero  or  Mr.  Jones  himself,  should 
not  be  considered  "literature,"  except  in  so  far 
as  they  fall  below  the  standards  of  the  best  dra- 
matic composition.     Just  what  added  value  the 

59 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

label  will  give  them  it  is  difficult  to  conceive. 
Surely,  as  plain  *' drama"  they  would  all  smell  as 
sweet. 

Meanwhile,  poetry  superimposed  upon  realism 
will  produce  not  dramatic  literature  but  incongru- 
ity. As  for  the  idealistic  play  in  blank  verse,  that 
is  an  entirely  different  matter,  one  that  we  may 
safely  leave  to  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips — ^better  to 
Monsieur  Edmond  Rostand.  They  wiU  make  use 
of  realism,  certainly,  only  to  temper  the  extrava- 
gances of  the  ultra-romantic.  Finally,  whether  we 
call  it  ''literary"  or  not,  the  highest  achievement 
of  the  realistic  dramatist  of  to-day,  instead  of 
depending  primarily  upon  stage  carpentry,  will  be 
the  best  possible  play,  both  as  to  characters  and 
as  to  plot,  the  dialogue  of  which  is  couched  approxi- 
mately in  the  language  such  people  would  use  in 
real  life.  For  in  this  word  "approximately"  are 
summed  up  all  the  accepted  conventions  of  select- 
ing and  heightening  and  rendering  effectual  for 
stage  purposes,  upon  which  is  based  the  indispens- 
able co-operative  illusion  of  the  theatre. 


60 


Ill 

THE  AMERICANS 

THE  first  play  written  by  an  American 
and  produced  in  America,  it  is  said,  was 
the  tragedy  The  Prince  of  Parthia,  by 
Thomas  Godfrey,  originally  performed  at  the 
Southwark  Theatre,  Philadelphia,  in  April,  1767, 
by  a  company  headed  by  Lewis  Hallam.  The 
author  was  an  ambitious  poet  who  died  at  an 
early  age.  His  play,  declared  above  mediocrity, 
formed  an  important  part  of  the  volume  of  his 
works  published  in  1765.  Of  the  great  flood  of 
dramatic  writing  poured  forth  in  this  country  from 
that  time  down  to  our  own  day  the  present  chapter 
can  say  but  little.  It  will  be  sufficient  for  its  pur- 
poses to  treat,  at  no  great  length  and  in  scant 
detail,  of  a  half-dozen  American  playwrights  of 
the  last  decade  or  two. 

The  period  of  the  American  Civil  War  has  been 
compared,  with  regard  to  its  effect  upon  the  native 

drama,  to  the  period  in  which  England  was  per- 

61 


THE      DRAM^A      TO-DAY 

meated  with  a  strong  sense  of  national  pride 
aroused  by  the  victories  of  Elizabeth's  reign.  It 
will  be  recalled  that,  shortly  after  the  death  of 
Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  and  the  defeat  of  the 
Armada,  the  chronicle  play,  dealing  with  English 
history,  flourished.  As  Professor  Baker  has  pointed 
out,  this  formless,  pageant-like  type  of  stage  enter- 
tainment depended  largely  upon  the  general  sense 
of  exalted  patriotism  for  its  emotional  effect. 
Accordingly,  when,  after  the  accession  of  James  I, 
national  pride  decayed,  the  chronicle  play  lost  its 
popularity,  in  part  on  this  account.  Similarly, 
after  the  Civil  War,  American  audiences  began  to 
take  kindly  to  a  sort  of  modern  chronicle  play, 
composed  of  more  or  less  detached  episodes  of  the 
battlefield  and  of  war-time.  And  then,  with  the 
ultimate  passing  of  the  strong  feeling  which  so 
long  survived  the  war,  this  loosely  built  drama 
disappeared.  As  in  the  time  of  King  James,  audi- 
ences began  to  insist  upon  some  degree  of  unity 
and  a  carefully  constructed  plot;  they  began  to 
demand  plays  creating  their  own  emotional  effect, 
without  extraneous  aid.    In  other  words,  both  the 

chronicle  play  and  the  old-style  war  drama  had  to 
62 


THE      AMERICANS 

be  emotionally  eked  out  by  the  latent  patriotism  of 
the  spectators,  in  the  same  way  that  certain  play- 
wrights and,  notably,  certain  vaudeville  performers 
of  the  present  emotionally  eke  out  their  productions 
or  their  ''acts"  with  a  display  of  the  American  flag. 
It  is  likewise  asserted  that,  just  as  the  foreign 
wars  of  Elizabeth's  reign  put  an  end  to  internal 
strife  and  gave  the  English  nation  a  new  sense  of 
unity,  so  the  brief  conflict  of  America  with  Spain 
gave  the  former  country  a  new  realization  both 
of  its  greatness  and  of  its  dangers.  With  a  new 
self-criticism  there  should  have  arisen  a  new  crea- 
tive activity;  and  the  Spanish-American  War,  as 
an  awakener  of  the  national  consciousness,  like 
the  defeat  of  the  Armada,  should  have  resulted  in 
a  greatly  improved  national  drama.  Whether  or 
not  this  has  been  the  case,  it  is  certain  that  there 
has  been  much  productivity  displayed  by  American 
playwrights  and  an  undoubted  increase  of  power. 
The  competition  of  the  Continent,  and  especially 
of  England,  has  been  strong.  The  feat,  too,  of 
writing  for  an  audience  sparsely  scattered  over  an 
enormous  territory  and  inhabiting  many  distinct 

sections  of  a  great  country  has  been  a  difficult  one. 

63 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

Naturally,  the  plaj^wright  has  been  limited  to  a 
fairly  general  appeal.  It  has  been  almost  as  if  he 
wrote  not  for  one  separate  nation  but  for  a  large 
group  of  nations.  To  please  and  satisfy  New 
England  and  New  York,  Texas  and  California,  all 
at  the  same  time,  is  a  very  different  matter  from 
writing  for  England  alone,  or  for  France  alone,  or 
for  Germany  merely. 

Glancing  down  the  list  of  playwrights  who 
have  flourished  in  America  since  the  Civil  War, 
one  singles  out  first  of  all  the  name  of  Bronson 
Howard.  The  most  significant  specimen  of  his 
dramatic  output  is  The  Henrietta,  perhaps  the 
original  of  a  long  line  of  characteristic  American 
dramas  of  business.  It  is,  however,  distinctly 
Victorian  and  mixed  in  its  moral  as  well  as  its 
artistic  value.  Nevertheless,  as  a  tragedy  of  com- 
mercial speculation,  it  stands  for  the  discovery  of 
that  new  romance  of  Wall  Street  and  of  the 
millionaire  of  which  we  have  since  heard  so  much. 
In  Shenandoah,  Howard  contributed  also  one  of 
the  earliest  of  the  loosely  knit  and  episodic  Civil 
War  plays.    The  chief  continuator  in  this  line  has 

probably  been  William  Gillette. 
64 


THE      AMERICANS 

Held  by  the  Enemy  is  a  decided  advance  in 
the  direction  of  the  more  compact  Civil  War  play. 
Indeed,  the  symmetry  of  this  and  other  of  Mr. 
Gillette^s  deservedly  popular  melodramas  has  been 
criticised  as  being  somewhat  too  marked:  there 
is  evidently  artificial  balance  in  the  regular  alter- 
nation of  comic  and  of  thrilling  scenes,  whereby 
the  story  is  repeatedly  halted  for  the  sake  of  humor. 
The  method  is  old-fashioned.  Constructive  solilo- 
quies and  asides  and  unmotivated  exits  and  en- 
trances abound.  Secret  Service,  while  sharing  in 
all  these  defects,  is  yet  a  well  built  melodrama, 
even  though  at  the  eleventh  hour  a  properly  tragic 
is  contorted  into  a  conventionally  "happy"  ending. 

In  the  progress  of  dramatic  technique,  however, 

Mr.  Gillette  occupies  a  place  among  the  forenm- 

ners  of  modem  visual  reaUsm,  as  substituted  for 

the  old-style  rhetorical  drama.    He  was  one  of  the 

first  to  appreciate  the  effectiveness  of  pantomime, 

which  he  skilfully  employed  in  numerous  instances, 

such  as  the  scene  in  the  last  act  of  Secret  Service, 

where  the  old  negro  servant  laboriously  removes 

the  bullets  from  the  cartridges  that  are  presently 

to  be  fired  at  the  hero.    Mr.  Gillette's  chief  limita- 
5  65 


THE      DRAMA     TO-DAY 

tions  as  a  pla3^wright  are  largely  connected  with 
the  fact  that  his  distinctly  story  plays — always 
either  melodrama  or  farce — ^were  all  written  to 
suit  his  own  phlegmatic  personality,  and  so 
contain  each  a  hero  who  is  extraordinarily 
calm  under  the  most  agitating  circumstances. 
Like  the  author  of  Caste,  he  is  a  master  of  the 
theatre,  rather  than  of  life,  and  in  this  respect 
differs  from  his  more  significant  contemporary, 
Bronson  Howard. 

In  a  third  notable  American  we  have  an  inter- 
esting compound  of  something  of  Howard's  vera- 
cious observation  with  much  of  Mr.  Gillette's 
theatricism.  The  untimely  death,  a  few  years  ago, 
of  Clyde  Fitch  cut  short  a  career  marked  by  great 
theatrical  versatility  and  photographic  power. 
About  sixty-six  plays  in  twenty  years  comprise 
his  output.  He  rarely  failed  of  an  interesting 
episode,  though  he  never  succeeded  in  giving  to 
any  of  his  work  a  high  degree  of  unity  of  effect 
and  significance.  The  variety  of  his  scenes  and 
characters  is  admirable;  but  always  there  is  a  lack 
of  emotional  depth  and  of  intellectual  power.    As 

a  natural  result,  with  almost  no  exceptions.  Fitch's 
66 


THE      AMERICANS 

plays  deal  with  themes  of  limited  appeal,  handled 
in  a  shallow,  not  to  say  superficial,  manner.  Vivac- 
ity they  have,  and  cleverness*  sharp  and  telling 
strokes  of  characterization  abound;  and  occasion- 
ally scenes,  such  as  in  the  third  act  of  The  Girl  with 
the  Green  Eyes,  stand  out  clearly  as  evidences  of 
true  dramatic  power. 

Clyde  Fitch  began  his  work  as  a  dramatist  in 
1890  with  Beau  Brummel,  which  achieved  a  much- 
heralded  success.  He  was  then  twenty-six  years 
of  age,  and  he  died  in  his  forty-fifth  year.  Beyond 
question,  much  of  his  work  is  flimsy  and  ephemeral. 
At  first,  as  in  The  Moth  and  the  Flame  and  A  Modem 
Match,  he  was  for  the  most  part  conventional. 
Beginning  with  The  Climbers,  however,  in  1901, 
his  first  nights  offered  a  series  of  surprises,  such 
as  the  opening  of  a  play  with  a  party  of  women 
returning  from  a  funeral,  the  folding-bed  scene  in 
The  Girl  and  the  Judge,  the  Cook's  tourists  before 
the  Apollo  Belvedere  in  The  Girl  with  the  Green 
Eyes,  the  scene  on  the  ocean  liner  in  The  Stubhom- 
ness  of  Geraldine,  and  the  christening  party  in  The 
Way  of  the  World.  True,  these  novelties  were  gen- 
erally unessential  to  the  real  action  of  the  play,  but 

67 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

they  were  presented  with  so  much  dash  that  one 
scarcely  noted  their  irrelevance.  Fitch  was  pri- 
marily a  genial  entertainer,  who  rarely  hesitated  to 
check  the  current  of  a  play  for  the  purpose  of 
introducing  either  an  amusing  or  an  amazing  scene 
or  a  scintillant  epigram.  His  irony,  being  for  no 
more  serious  purpose  than  entertainment,  was 
never  mordant.  Indeed,  this  playwright  was  that 
almost  unique  phenomenon,  the  modern  dramatist 
who  never  takes  himself  over-seriously.  This  is, 
perhaps,  a  pity,  since  a  more  profound  sense  of  the 
value  of  his  work  might  have  led  him  to  that 
painstaking  revision  and  compression  his  plays  so 
obviously  lack. 

Before  his  untimely  death,  Clyde  Fitch  said 
that  The  City  was  his  best  play.  It  is  undoubtedly 
striking,  but  it  faUs  short  of  greatness  because  of 
his  usual  defect — a  lack  of  unity  in  development 
as  weU  as  in  theme.  The  underlying  proposition 
is  that  life  in  a  small  town  does  not  search  out  a 
man's  soul  or  accentuate  both  his  strength  and 
his  weakness  as  does  life  in  the  city.  And  yet  the 
striking  part  of  the  play  is  but  remotely  connected 

with  this  theme,  and  depends  upon  a  secondary 
68 


THE      AMERICANS 

plot  for  its  effectiveness.  And  this  secondary  plot 
is  a  mere  remoulding  of  the  age-old  story  of  un- 
conscious incest,  handed  down  to  us  from  the  Attic 
drama.  Hannock,  an  illegitimate  son  of  George 
Rand,  Sr.,  and  a  degenerate  drug  fiend,  secretly 
marries  Cicely,  Rand's  daughter.  Inmiediately 
after  the  ceremony  the  bridegroom  is  informed  by 
George  Rand,  Jr.,  of  the  unguessed  consanguinity. 
In  a  scene  of  high-piled  melodramatic  horrors, 
Hannock  kills  Cicely  and  is  barely  prevented  by 
her  brother  from  committing  suicide.  With  the 
exception  of  this  thrilling  episode,  the  play  is  one 
of  serious  dignity;  but  the  rest  of  it  seems  dull  in 
comparison  with  this  "big"  and  non-essential 
moment. 

In  The  City,  as  in  a  long  list  of  plays  preceding 
it,  the  author  displayed  his  fertility  in  stagecraft. 
In  the  first  act,  for  example,  the  story  is  continued 
for  some  minutes  by  voices  "off,"  while  the  stage 
itself  remains  empty.  George  Rand,  Sr.,  has  sud- 
denly died,  and  we  hear  the  resultant  confusion  in 
his  household,  rather  than  see  it.  Again,  in  Act 
III,  in  order  to  get  rid  of  a  broken  window,  through 

which  a  pistol  has  been  hurled  at  the  close  of  Act 

69 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

II,  the  playwright  turns  the  room  about  and  shows 
another  part  of  it. 

But  clever  stagecraft  and  dexterous  dialogue 
do  not  compensate  for  divagations  from  the  theme, 
consequent  looseness  of  structure,  and  lack  of  sure- 
ness  in  characterization,  at  least  in  the  case  of 
important  male  figures.  Women  Fitch  understood 
and  could  draw  unusually  well,  though  often  his 
greatest  success  is  in  mere  vignettes  of  minor 
characters.  His  leading  men,  however,  are  likely 
to  waver  and  to  be  subjected  rather  ruthlessly  to 
the  exigencies  of  the  plot.  George  Rand,  Jr.,  is  an 
uncertain  figure,  when  compared  with  the  well 
drawn  Hannock  and  the  women  of  The  City.  As 
a  photographer  and  a  scene-builder.  Fitch  was 
extraordinarily  expert.  His  work  was  lacking, 
however,  both  in  high  purpose  and  symmetrical 
plan. 

If  Bronson  Howard  inaugurated  and  Clyde 

Fitch  advanced  our  one  distinct  American  type  of 

drama,  the  play  of  business  and  politics,  it  has 

remained  for  Charles  Klein  to  lead  in  the  further 

development  of  this  genre.    The  American  stage 

early   turned   reafism   to   journalistic   uses.     As 
70 


THE      AMERICANS 

*' muck-raking"  became  the  rage  in  the  newspaper 
world,  so  it  waxed  predominant  behind  our  foot- 
lights. The  Battle  was  a  journalistic  exploitation 
of  the  model  tenement  reform;  The  Man  of  the 
Hour,  of  municipal  corruption;  The  Dawn  of  a 
To-morrow y  of  optimism  as  a  panacea;  The  Easiest 
Way,  of  the  social  evil;  The  Third  Degree,  of  modem 
police  torture  for  confessions  often  false;  The  Lion 
and  the  Mouse,  of  the  ruthlessness  of ''  big  business." 
Charles  Klein  is,  in  fact,  our  leading  journalist  of 
the  stage. 

One  of  the  pioneers  in  the  "muck-raking" 
movement  began  with  a  searching  expose  of  Stand- 
ard Oil  and  its  methods.  This  work  inspired  The 
Lion  and  the  Mouse,  an  extraordinarily  uneven,  as 
it  has  been  an  extraordinarily  popular,  play.  Its 
plan  is  the  usual  one  adopted  by  this  author:  it 
has  a  theatrical  plot  of  cumulative  intensity,  to 
which  characterization  is  frequently  sacrificed 
along  with  both  ethics  and  the  probabilities.  The 
manner  in  which  the  daughter  of  the  wronged  man 
l^ecomes  a  part  of  the  household  of  her  father's 
oppressor,  for  example,  is  entirely  incredible;  yet 

it  makes  the  opportunity  for  the  tensely  emotional 

71 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

"big  scene."  When  this  is  rounded  off  with  a 
conventional  "happy  ending,"  made  possible  by 
preposterous  personal  reforms,  we  have  obviously 
journalistic  melodrama,  perhaps  of  admirable 
mechanism,  but  achieving  no  reflection  of  actual 
life. 

When  Mr.  Klein  attempts  to  embody  the  con- 
flict of  labor  and  capital  in  The  Daughters  of  Men, 
his  highly  artificial  method  fails  of  that  convinc- 
ing characterization  which  alone  could  make  the 
struggle  interesting,  as  it  has  done  in  the  case  of 
Mr.  Galsworthy's  Strife,  The  Gamblers  is  an  im- 
provement, in  structure  at  least,  upon  The  Lion 
and  the  Mouse,  though  less  effective  than  The 
Third  Degree.  The  exigencies  of  the  "popular 
demand"  seem  always  to  hamper  Mr.  Klein  in 
his  treatment  of  themes  essentially  tragic.  What 
he  might  be  capable  of,  were  he  to  carry  out  his 
stories  to  their  inevitable  conclusions,  developing 
them  by  means  of  relentlessly  consistent  character- 
ization, is  a  matter  for  interesting  speculation. 
Doubtless,  we  should  then  have  from  his  pen  more 
worthy  modern  successors  to  The  Henrietta. 

Mr.  George  H.  Broadhurst  is  another  writer 

72 


THE      AMERICANS 

who  has  contributed  to  the  drama  of  business  and 
politics,  at  least  in  The  Man  of  the  Hour.  The 
muck-rake  is  here  plunged  into  that  most  putres- 
cent of  American  corruptions,  graft-ridden  munic- 
ipal government.  The  dramatic  possibilities  are, 
of  course,  endless.  Mr.  Broadhurst  realizes  them 
in  part,  not  so  much  in  the  moralistic  attitude  of 
Mr.  Klein,  but  rather  from  the  detached  stand- 
point of  the  writer  of  comedy.  At  least,  humor  is 
the  saving  grace  of  this  melodrama  of  overcrowded 
incident;  just  as  it  is  the  redeeming  feature  of 
Bought  and  Paid  For.  The  author  of  The  Lion  and 
the  Mouse  usually  errs  through  excessive  theatri- 
cality. The  writer  of  such  amusing  farces  as  What 
Happened  to  Jones  and  Why  Smith  Left  Home  is 
subject  to  the  same  defect,  but  he  frequently 
covers  it,  in  plays  primarily  intended  to  be  serious, 
with  a  great  deal  of  clever,  though  non-essential, 
diversion.  The  theme  of  Bought  and  Paid  For,  for 
instance,  the  rebellion  of  a  sensitive  feminine  nature 
against  the  demands  of  a  husband  made  brutish 
by  alcohol,  is  a  fundamentally  tragic  one,  and  yet 
the  play  attained  its  extreme  popularity  chiefly 

on  the  strength  of  its  comic  relief.    The  characters 

73 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

are  for  the  most  part  commonplace,  not  to  say 
disgusting:  the  husband,  in  his  cups  and  after 
the  first  act  at  least,  is  a  maudlin  ruffian;  the 
sister  is  coarse-grained  and  shallow;  the  ''friend'' 
is  cowardly  and  abject;  the  plot  itself  is  repulsive 
to  a  degree — ^yet  it  all  ends  as  happily  as  does,  say. 
The  Lion  and  the  Mouse  or  The  Third  Degree.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  inasmuch  as  Robert  Stafford  and 
Virginia  Blaine,  for  plot  purposes  only,  are  forced 
to  sacrifice  their  humanity,  Bought  and  Paid  For 
is  clearly  melodrama,  based  upon  sentimentality. 
But  in  James  Gilley  we  have  an  extraordinarily 
amusing  character  study,  a  selfish,  ill-bred  bounder, 
who  proves  actually  lovable  for  his  good-humored 
frankness;  and  this  figure,  perhaps  after  all  a  quite 
impossible  one,  saves  the  play.  An  equally  amus- 
ing character,  instead  of  the  very  few  comedy 
lines  contributed  by  the  younger  brother  in  Joseph 
Medill  Patterson's  drama  of  similar  story,  Rebel- 
lion, might  have  won  for  that  technically  superior, 
if  over-didactic,  play  a  popularity  as  signal  as  that 
of  Bought  and  Paid  For.  Mr.  Patterson's  play, 
however,  is  intensely  serious  and  frequently  so 

argumentative  as  to  give  the  effect  rather  of  debate 

74 


THE      AMERICANS 

merely  than  of  drama.  It  is  at  least  commend- 
able for  its  consistent  narrative  unity.  Of  the 
two  writers,  Mr.  Broadhnrst  is  thus  far  the  more 
successful  in  the  building  of  plots,  while  Mr. 
Patterson  possibly  excels  in  the  depicting  of  seri- 
ous character.  Not  that  Mr.  Broadhurst's  poli- 
ticians, for  instance,  are  not  excellent;  still  most 
of  his  main  figures  are  wooden,  particularly  his 
women. 

Usually  excelling  both  these  playwrights  on 
both  scores  is  Mr.  Augustus  Thomas.  He  first 
became  a  definite  figure  in  the  world  of  the  theatre 
through  the  writing  of  such  racy  and  atmospheric 
melodramas  as  Alabama  and  Arizona.  It  was 
once  said  that  he  purposed  going  through  the 
entire  list  of  the  forty-odd  States  in  the  Union 
alphabetically,  writing  a  play  for  each  State. 
Apparently  this  interesting  project  met  shipwreck 
when  it  had  proceeded  no  further  than  Colorado. 

Alabama  is  in  the  good  old  tradition,  leisurely 
and  familiar,  though  enlivened  by  several  interest- 
ing Southern  types.  Arizona  is  more  compact  and 
tense.    As  in  melodrama  generally,  however,  the 

plot  here  sometimes  depends  for  its  success  upon 

75 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

its  speed  in  passing  over  weak  places  which,  if 
dwelt  upon,  might  bring  disaster.  Merely — and 
most  naturally — ^looking  for  Denton's  .44  bullet  in 
the  floor,  at  the  chmax  of  Act  III,  not  only  would 
save  probing  for  the  Mexican's  .38  bullet  in  the 
villain  Hodgman,  but  would  bring  about  a  much 
prompter  denouement.  The  author,  however,  loses 
no  time  in  getting  us  out  of  the  room  where  the 
two  shots  were  fired. 

Of  late  years  Mr.  Thomas  has  turned  his  atten- 
tion to  the  expounding  of  a  philosophy,  which 
appears  to  be  a  mixture  of  determined  modem 
optimism  and  the  equally  modern  scientific  treat- 
ment of  unplumbed  mental  phenomena  formerly 
classed  as  occult.  In  The  Witching  Hour,  for 
instance,  we  have  an  exploitation  of  thought  as  a 
d3niamic  force  partaking  of  the  nature  of  action. 
In  The  Harvest  Moon  the  theme  is,  similarly,  the 
suggestive  influence  of  environment  upon  charac- 
ter. Because  of  this  singleness  of  theme,  both  of 
these  plays  are  technically  superior  to  As  a  Man 
Thinks,  which  loses  effectiveness  by  not  concen- 
trating upon  one  idea.    The  power  of  thought  is 

again  exploited,  but  at  least  two  other  distinct 
76 


THE      AMERICANS 

themes  are  present:  the  Jew  in  modern  New  York 
society  and  the  "double  standard"  of  morals.  K 
this  play  had  been  confined  to  an  exposition  of  the 
poison  of  hatred  and  its  antidote,  forgiveness,  it 
would  perhaps  have  ranked  above  any  of  its  pre- 
decessors. In  fact,  Mr.  Thomas,  in  much  of  his 
work,  displays  not  only  a  high  purpose  but  a 
mastery  of  dramatic  technique  so  far  attained  by 
no  other  American,  and  as  yet  surpassed  in  England 
only  by  Pinero.  To  illustrate,  one  need  only  refer 
to  the  superb  manner  in  which  the  gradual  exposi- 
tion in  As  a  Man  Thinks  is  managed  through  scenes 
where  characters,  coming  and  going,  engage  in  a 
general  dialogue;  the  skilful  way  in  which  the 
author  connects  all  the  expository  lines  with  Bur- 
riU's  two  figurines;  the  resoiu-ceful  motivation  of 
the  entrances  and  exits;  and  the  extraordinarily 
realistic  effect  of  the  dialogue  itself,  fragmentary 
and  discursive  as  in  real  life,  and  yet  always 
dramatic  and  always  advancing  the  plot. 

The  number  and  the  quality  of  the  successes 
of  Mr.  Thomas  are  matched  only  by  the  number 
and  the  quality  of  his  failures.    Within  a  short 

period  after  the  revelation  of  so  workmanlike  a 

77 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

drama  as  As  a  Man  Thinks^  he  has  offered  so 
antiquated  and  so  puerile  an  effort  as  The  Model, 
first  presented  as  When  It  Comes  Home.  Here  in 
what  is  apparently,  though  not  credibly,  the 
mature  work  of  the  leading  American  dramatist 
we  have  the  long-lost  daughter  of  The  Music 
Master  and  untold  other  plays,  and  the  old-time 
villain  of  the  naiVer  melodrama,  practising  his 
wily  seductions  upon  the  innocent  heroine,  whose 
vocation  of  posing  in  the  altogether  to  painters  is, 
of  course,  misinterpreted  greatly  to  her  disadvan- 
tage. An  almost  equally  pronounced  failure  was 
this  play's  immediate  successor,  Mere  Man,  a 
comedy  displaying  all  the  faults  Mr.  Thomas  has 
so  often  and  so  skilfully  avoided.  Intended  as  a 
blow  at  woman  suffrage,  the  play  involves  itself 
in  various  other  topics  and,  from  a  confused  ex- 
position, develops  an  incoherent  and  inconclusive 
story. 

In  Arizona  Mr.  Thomas  contributed  an  impor- 
tant item  to  that  long  list  of  Western  plays,  chiefly 
melodramas,  originating  in  the  frontier  romances 
of  Bret  Harte.  The  Heir  to  the  Hoorah,  Salomy 
Jane,  and  The  Girl  of  the  Golden  West  are  easily 
78 


THE      AMERICANS 

remembered  titles  in  this  group.     Doubtless  the 

most  important  of  these  cowboy  and  mining-camp 

stories  is  the  late  William  Vaughn  Moody's  The 

Great  Divide.    Indeed,  this  melodrama  was  for  a 

time  hailed  as  that  nebulous  desideratum,  the 

"great  American  drama,"  more  than  one  critic 

declaring  it  the  inevitable  forerunner  of  a  new 

native  stage  literature.    It  is,  indeed,  with  certain 

important  exceptions,  an  effective,  if  occasionally 

crude  and  unpoetic,  treatment  of  a  vital  theme. 

Originally  entitled  A  Sabine  Woman,  it  tells  the 

story  of  the  brutal  domination  of  the  heroine  by 

the  hero,  who,  having  saved  her  from  outrage  at 

the  hands  of  two  other  roisterers,  leads  her,  with 

no  choice,  to  the  nearest  magistrate.    The  "great 

divide"  is  the  boundary  between  Ruth  Jordan's 

Eastern  refinement  and  Stephen  Ghent's  Western 

primitiveness.    When  Ruth's  puritanical  brother 

learns  the  facts  of  the  marriage,  he  is  for  killing 

her  husband.    Her  mother  tells  Ruth  she  should 

have  killed  herself.     The  girl,  however,  lives  to 

learn  that,  when  the  "great  divide"  has  finally 

been  crossed,  life  looms  larger  for  her  than  ever 

before.    This  happy  ending  has  been  denounced 

79 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

as  illogical  and  deplorable.  Mother  Grundy  has 
been  deferred  to,  certain  critics  also  insist,  in  the 
matter  of  the  marriage  that  closes  the  first  act: 
in  real  life  Stephen  Ghent  would  not  have  taken 
the  trouble  this  formality  involved;  and,  if  he  had 
done  so,  the  woman,  being  what  she  was  and  feeling 
as  she  did,  would  have  at  once  appealed  to  the 
justice  of  the  peace  for  protection  against  the 
brute  who  was  forcing  her  into  an  utterly  abhor- 
rent union. 

When  The  Great  Divide  was  recently  produced 
at  the  Theatre  des  Arts  in  Paris,  under  the  title  of 
Les  Deux  Versants,  Monsieur  Robert  de  Flers, 
who  is  one  of  the  most  brilliant  and  promising  of 
the  younger  French  playwrights,  wrote  in  Le 
Figaro  of  the  first  performance: 

"To  encounter  this  struggle  of  nature  against 
society,  one  need  not  go  to  the  mountains  of  Ari- 
zona; it  may  be  found  anywhere,  and  it  is  in  the 
strict  French  romantic  tradition.  However,  this 
eternal  conflict  is  sharper,  more  brutal,  and  more 
moving  in  the  two  localities  where  W.  Vaughan 
(sic)  has  placed  his  action,  and  so  the  subject  he 

has  chosen  could  have  much  grandeur  and  poig- 
80 


THE      AMERICANS 

nant  intensity;  but  it  has  been  treated  without 
audacity  and  without  authority,  with  uncertainty 
and  awkward  complications.  The  Westerner,  who 
symbolizes  unconquered  and  primitive  nature,  be- 
comes civilized  too  quickly  and  too  completely. 
The  cowboy  is  transformed  into  a  Celadon.  He 
begins  by  forcibly  abducting  a  woman  of  much 
charm,  but  he  is  presently  only  a  very  gentle  and 
inoffensive  chap.  Thenceforward  one  sees  quite 
readily  that  the  Eastern  heroine  will  eventually  be 
attracted  by  him  and  will  give  him  her  love." 

Nevertheless,  here  is  a  virile  play,  wherein  life- 
like and  well  contrasted  characters  enact  moving 
scenes.  In  spite  of  its  improbability,  the  final 
reconciliation  of  Stephen  and  Ruth  is  a  notable 
passage  in  our  stage  writing.  The  dialogue,  too, 
is  simple,  natural,  and  compact;  while  the  theme — 
the  lifting  of  a  man  from  brutality  to  nobility 
through  the  power  of  earthly  love — is  always 
material  for  drama.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that, 
in  his  second  play.  The  Faith  Healer,  Moody 
relapsed  into  the  non-objective.  The  impression 
produced  by  a  dramatic  struggle  which  is  not  por- 
trayed in  action  is  inevitably  vague  and  unsub- 
6  81 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

stantial.  The  Faith  Healer  lacks  the  qualities 
which  so  well  adapted  The  Great  Divide  to  the 
stage;  it  is  "literary,"  a  notable  example  of  poetic 
prose,  essentially  a  closet  drama. 

Another  American  writer  whose  gift  of  style 
overshadows  his  dramatic  power  is  Mr.  Percy 
Mackaye.  In  Jeanne  d'Arc,  Fenris  the  Wolf,  The 
Canterbury  Pilgrims,  Mater,  Anti-Matrimony,  The 
Scarecrow,  and  To-morrow  he  has  produced  a  series 
of  plays  either  frankly  in  verse  or  in  highly  orna- 
mented prose,  all  of  them  delightful  to  read  and 
all  strangely  lacking  in  effectiveness  for  the  stage. 
In  fact,  over-elaborate  dialogue,  as  well  as  defec- 
tive structure,  militates  against  this  author's  suc- 
cess. Jeanne  d^Arc,  for  example,  though  it  admir- 
ably portrays  the  peasant  heroine  of  Domremy, 
does  so,  after  the  manner  of  the  Elizabethan 
chronicle  play,  in  a  series  of  scenes  not  unified  by 
any  definite  and  single  action.  The  Canterbury 
Pilgrims,  likewise,  is  more  pageant  than  comedy, 
better  adapted  to  the  greensward  than  to  the  foot- 
lights— ^better  still,  perhaps,  to  the  closet.  In 
Anti-Matrimony  the  author's  skill  in  literary  sat- 
ire is  directed  against  various  topics  dear  to  the 
82 


THE      AMERICANS 

writers  of  modem  ^'problem  plays,"  such  as  free 
love  and  exuberant  individualism.  The  plot  is 
extravagant  and  illogical,  degenerating  at  length 
into  a  fantastic  travesty  upon  Rosmersholm.  In 
To-morrow,  Mr.  Mackaye  has  classed  himseK  with 
the  authors  ridiculed  in  Anti-Matrimony,  by  at- 
tempting a  dramatic  presentment  of  the  problem 
of  eugenics.  His  idea  is  to  apply  to  man  the  prin- 
ciples of  scientific  horticulture — to  "Burbank" 
the  human  race.  Obviously  not  new,  this  subject 
is  incapable  of  dramatic  illustration.  It  has  been 
given  a  theatrical  setting,  developed  in  over- 
elaborate  and  didactic  dialogue.  The  central  situ- 
ation, wherein  the  hero,  to  save  the  heroine  from 
her  infatuation  for  the  unwholesome  lover  she  has 
selected,  hurls  him  over  a  cHff  into  the  sea,  like 
the  majority  of  such  melodramatic  acts  of  physical 
violence  in  serious  plays,  does  not  grow  at  all 
logically  out  of  the  characters.  The  last  act  of  the 
play,  too,  grossly  violates  fundamental  dramatic 
principles,  not  only  in  the  method  of  reaching  the 
solution,  but  also  in  the  matter  of  its  ill-distributed 
emphasis. 

Very  different  from  the  author  of  To-morrow 

83 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

are  Messrs.  Edward  Sheldon  and  Eugene  Walter, 
who  stand  among  our  leading  continuators  of  the 
ultra-realistic  tradition  founded  by  the  late  James 
A.  Heme.  He,  it  will  be  recalled,  blended  humor 
and  pathos,  somewhat  after  the  manner  of  Mr. 
James  Whitcomb  Riley,  in  a  series  of  repressed 
and  homely  dramas  of  rural  naturalism,  including 
Hearts  of  Oak,  Shore  Acres,  Sag  Harbor,  and 
Margaret  Fleming.  The  aim  of  this  noteworthy 
pioneer  was,  of  course,  the  exact  reproduction  of 
the  particular.  Everybody  well  remembers  how 
the  characters  in  Shore  Acres,  for  instance,  actually 
roasted  and  ate  a  real  turkey  on  the  stage.  The 
significance  to  art  of  this  detail  is  doubtless-  a 
matter  of  question.  Certainly  no  possible  agglom- 
eration of  similar  particulars  can  be  expected  to 
reflect  life  as  a  whole.  Inevitably,  it  makes  for 
the  narrow  instead  of  the  broad  outlook. 

At  all  events,  both  Mr.  Sheldon  and  Mr. 
Walter  assiduously  cultivate  actuality  in  their 
plays,  going  for  their  subject-matter  to  the  com- 
monplace and  even  to  the  repellent,  and  presenting 
their  narratives  by  means  of  action  and  dialogue 

closely  observed  and  copied  from  everyday  life. 
84 


THE      AMERICANS 

The  same  negative  qualities  likewise  characterize 
the  work  of  both  authors,  if  in  different  degrees. 
Though  each  is  faithful  to  fact  in  the  details  of 
incident  and  speech,  he  is  also  frequently  incon- 
sistent in  the  development  of  his  characters  and  the 
construction  of  his  plots.  The  familiar  evil  genius 
of  theatricism,  in  fact,  and  of  conventional  theatri- 
cism  at  that,  has  too  often  operated  to  mar  the 
work  of  the  very  playwrights  who  aim  above  all 
things  else  to  be  inevitably  real. 

Mr.  Walter  is  known  chiefly  for  his  three  suc- 
cessful plays.  Paid  in  Full,  The  Easiest  Way,  and 
Fine  Feathers.  In  Paid  in  Full  he  starts  out  with 
the  very  modem  and  very  general  problem  of 
living  according  to  latter-day  standards  upon  an 
inadequate  income.  Much  as  Mr.  Broadhurst 
does  in  Bought  and  Paid  For,  and  as  Sir  Arthur 
Pinero  does  in  Mid-Channel,  as  Clyde  Fitch  does 
in  The  City,  and  as  scores  of  lesser  lights  have  done 
in  scores  of  other  plays,  however,  Mr.  Walter  here 
quickly  throws  his  initial  problem  overboard  and 
launches  into  a  conventional,  if  rugged  and  brutal 
narrative.    It  is  the  old  story  of  the  plot-ridden 

characters  who,  instead  of  doing  the  inevitable 

86 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

things  that  would  result  from  all  the  conditions 
according  to  the  logic  of  life,  do  the  usual  things 
which  are  merely  theatrically  effective  according 
to  the  quite  different  ''unlogic"  of  the  footlights. 
Before  we  have  progressed  far  into  Act  II  we  have 
broken  with  our  fundamental  social  and  economic 
problem — one,  besides,  that  teems  with  unexplored 
dramatic  possibilities — and  we  are  deep  in  the  old, 
old  melodrama  of  the  woman  tempted  to  sacrifice 
her  honor  to  save  a  man  from  ruin. 

To  Mr.  Walter's  credit,  be  it  said  immediately, 
however,  that  he  does  not  always  allow  conven- 
tionality to  force  him  into  that  most  inexcus- 
able of  theatrical  makeshifts,  the  illogical  ''happy 
ending."  Indeed,  when  he  gets  out  of  the  tragic 
genre,  he  is  likely  to  go  to  pieces.  Just  a  Wife  is  a 
remarkably  poor  example  of  writing  for  the  stage, 
a  play  of  incredible  plot,  strained  dialogue,  and 
almost  no  action.  The  Easiest  Way  is  the  tragedy 
of  Laura  Murdock,  an  attractive  young  woman 
who,  having  been  handicapped  with  a  bad  start 
in  life,  is  inspired  by  an  honest  love  to  a  brave 
struggle  to  lift  herself  out  of  the  mire,  but  who 

eventually  succumbs  to  a  conspiracy  of  opposition. 
86 


THE      AMERICANS 

In  spite  of  the  vast  difference  between  them  as 
women,  the  warfare  of  Antigone^s  self-will  with 
regulations  human  and  divine  is  no  more  hopeless 
than  that  of  Laura  Murdock  against  the  cumulative 
power  of  environment  and  the  weakening  forces 
set  to  work  within  her  own  nature.  It  is  the  story 
of  the  gradual  decay  and  dissolution  of  a  human 
soul,  struggling,  faltering,  failing.  And  this  story 
is  told  with  a  simplicity,  a  concentration,  and  a 
searching  analysis  that  make  one  throb  with  pity 
for  the  wretched  figure  writhing  upon  the  rack  of 
circumstance. 

Laura  Murdock's  lover,  however,  was  not  the 
manly  Westerner  the  author  would  have  her — or 
us — ^believe  him.  His  Alaskan  venture  is  an 
almost  unpardonable  expedient  for  leaving  the  girl 
alone  to  fight  her  losing  battle.  Considering  their 
ambition  for  decency,  why  they  did  not  settle 
down  in  Denver  on  a  reporter's  twenty-five  dollars 
a  week  cannot  be  satisfactorily  demonstrated. 
But  then  there  would  have  been  a  very  different 
play.  And  even  when  John  "  made  his  pile,"  as 
Klondykers  always  do  in  fiction,  he  lost  much 
invaluable  time  before  conveying  to  Laura  the 

87 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

financial  assistance  he  should  have  feared  she 
needed.  Neither  theme  nor  story,  moreover,  is 
exceptionally  novel.  Certainly  The  Easiest  Way 
bears  to  Pinero's  Iris  sl  resemblance  more  striking 
even  than  does  Bought  and  Paid  For  to  Matemite 
or  Smith  to  The  Walls  of  Jericho. 

In  Fine  Feathers,  Mr.  Walter  has  once  more 
utilized  actuality  to  enforce  a  momentous  moral. 
In  a  sense,  this  drama  is  The  Easiest  Way  over 
again,  with  a  man  for  a  protagonist.  Once  more 
we  have  that  distinctly  modem  sort  of  tragedy 
which  springs  from  incessant  vexation  with  the 
petty  discomforts  of  poverty  in  a  world  where 
riches  serve  as  the  key  to  increasing  luxury.  A 
man  subject  to  this  wearing  annoyance,  reinforced 
as  it  is  by  his  desire  to  provide  ease  and  pleasure 
for  his  relentless  young  wife,  is  tempted  to  misuse 
the  authority  of  an  underpaid  position.  He  lets 
second-grade  cement  go  into  the  construction  of 
an  immense  dam.  By  so  doing  he  acquires  forty 
thousand  dollars,  a  sum  which  enables  him  to  ex- 
change a  stuffy  bungalow  for  a  Long  Island  villa. 
But  his  conscience  prods  him  incessantly.   Through 

loss  he  sinks  to  blackmail.    When  high  water  at 
88 


THE      AMERICANS 

length  puts  the  dam  to  the  test,  and  it  goes  out, 
carrying  with  it  hundreds  of  lives,  Bob  Reynolds, 
crazed  with  despair  and  realizing  to  the  full  that 
''there  are  some  men  who  can't  do  a  wrong  and 
get  away  with  it,"  since  "the  wrong  always  gets 
them,"  ends  his  wasted  life  with  a  pistol  shot.  Mr. 
Walter's  handling  of  this  notable  theme  is,  of 
course,  photographic  and  not  at  all  subtle.  He 
has  not  succeeded  in  abolishing  his  tendency  to 
the  merely  theatrical,  and  his  efforts  to  gain  sym- 
pathy  for  his  hero  are  largely  unavailing.  His 
villain  is  of  the  old-fashioned,  unadulterated  type 
of  scoundrelism,  and  the  comic  relief  still  shows  a 
tendency  to  get  in  the  way  of  the  plot.  Neverthe- 
less, the  playwright  has  here  undoubtedly  por- 
trayed spiritual  conflict  forcefully  and  sincerely. 

Of  like  attainments  in  the  realm  of  the  realistic, 
but  of  considerably  more  uneven  performance,  is 
Mr.  Edward  Sheldon.  His  first  play.  Salvation 
Nell,  revealed  his  close  observation  and  his  sense 
of  fact.  Like  many  another  realist,  however,  in 
more  demesnes  than  that  of  the  stage  merely,  Mr. 
Sheldon  has  often  mistaken  superficial  fact  for 

the  deeper-seated  truth.    Coupled  with  this  failing 

89 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

is  a  marked  tendency  to  present  outworn  theatrical 
situations  in  a  grandiose  style.  In  The  Nigger^ 
perhaps  the  most  pretentious  of  this  writer's  works, 
we  have  the  material  for  essential  tragedy,  offered 
first  in  the  form  of  crude  melodrama  and  later 
dwindling  into  platitudinous  and  anti-climactic 
talk.  The  play  is  founded  upon  an  incredible 
major  premise,  devised  obviously  for  the  mere  sake 
of  a  ''big  scene."  In  The  Boss  the  tendency  to 
utilize  hackneyed  situation  and  insufficiently  moti- 
vated incidents  becomes  yet  more  marked.  There 
is  again  much  that  is  theatrically  effective,  but 
very  little  that  is  actually  representative  of  life. 
The  main  elements  of  the  plot,  the  heroine's  mar- 
riage and  her  subsequent  falling  in  love  with  her 
husband,  are  quite  unbelievable.  The  strongest 
scene  in  the  play  slips  at  last  into  a  melodramatic 
Richelieu  speech  of  excommunication. 

It  is  pleasant  to  note,  in  this  connection,  that, 
with  his  recently  produced  drama,  A  Man's 
Friends,  Mr.  Ernest  Poole  has  achieved  a  treat- 
ment of  the  modern  political  boss  that  is  sincere 
and  genuine  throughout.  As  usual  the  unscrupu- 
lous leader  here  is  opposed  by  an  honest  district 
90 


THE      AMERICANS 

attorney,  but  the  conflict  and  its  termination  are 
by  no  means  of  the  time-honored  sort.  Because 
the  characters  are  vital,  the  plot  is  unhackneyed. 
Puppets  always  play  the  old  stage  tricks,  but  real 
men  and  women  do  the  works  of  reality. 

As  for  Mr.  Sheldon,  in  such  products  as  Egypt 
and  The  High  Road,  plays  intended  to  give  scope 
to  the  abilities  of  two  of  our  foremost  living  ac- 
tresses, his  old  failings  become  so  pronounced  as 
almost  to  neutralize  his  excellences.  The  former 
piece  is  a  mere  patchwork  of  antiquated  characters, 
situations,  and  phrases  from  melodrama,  from  the 
long-lost  daughter  carried  off  by  the  gypsies  and 
restored  to  her  father  after  many  years,  to  the 
ancient  crone  of  the  virulent  curses  and  the  glitter- 
ing eye.  Opulent  staging  and  the  best  of  interpre- 
tation could  not  save  such  a  fabric  of  fustian.  As 
for  The  High  Road,  it  is  similarly  conventional,  if 
in  a  less  degree.  The  plot — that  of  the  country 
belle  who  goes  to  the  wicked  city  with  a  gay  de- 
ceiver, later  marries  a  good  man,  and  is  found  out 
by  her  sin  at  a  crucial  moment  in  his  career — is 
one  that  many  other  playwrights  have  dealt  with, 

particularly  in  recent  years.    The  Woman  and  The 

91 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

Price,  for  example,  are  of  this  ilk,  not  to  go  back 
so  far  as  to  Hazel  Kirke,  or  even  to  Mrs.  Dane^s 
Defense.  The  characters  and  the  dialogue  as  well, 
in  The  High  Road,  are  distressingly  antique,  while 
the  heroine's  about-face  from  a  whole-hearted 
absorption  in  art  to  an  abrupt  humanitarianism 
is  far  from  sufficiently  motivated.  The  play  natu- 
rally disappoints,  too,  when  we  are  shown  a  prospec- 
tive president  of  the  United  States,  with  his  wife 
of  the  shady  past,  combining  in  a  schoolboy  plot 
to  foil  the  blackmailing  villain. 

Mr.  Sheldon  displayed  such  vigor  and  promise 
in  his  earlier  work  that  much  has  been  expected  of 
him  since.  If  his  future  dramatic  writing  were  to 
continue  so  far  below  his  own  earlier  level  as  Egypt 
and  The  High  Road,  the  American  stage  would 
thus  undoubtedly  suffer  by  one  more  case  of 
arrested  development.  Fortunately  for  all  con- 
cerned, however,  this  author  has  more  recently 
produced,  as  his  third  offering  of  a  single  season, 
a  much  more  acceptable  play,  bearing  the  signifi- 
cant title,  Romance.  Here,  for  once,  the  purely 
photographic  is  laid  aside,  along  with  much  of  the 

purely  theatrical;  and  actual  poetic  feeling  is  at 
92 


THE      AMERICANS 

times  made  manifest.  Prologue  and  epilogue  are 
of  to-day,  but  the  main  action  takes  place  in  the 
seventies,  dealing  with  the  infatuation  of  an  ardent 
young  clergyman  for  a  capricious  Italian  prima 
donna.  As  is  the  case  with  so  many  sister  heroines 
of  latter-day  plays,  this  diva's  past  proves  a 
luxiuy  for  which  she  must  pay  by  renouncing  her 
lover  in  his  own  behalf.  He,  meanwhile,  has 
passed  from  a  mad  endeavor  to  save  her  soul  to  an 
even  more  insane  desire  incontinently  to  possess 
her.  But  he  is  destined  to  become  the  good  bishop 
of  the  rather  superfluous  prologue  and  epilogue, 
and  to  learn  of  the  once  lovely  Cavallini's  death 
in  Italy,  just  after  he  has  finished  recounting  his 
life-story  to  a  grandson  who  repeats  history  with 
his  infatuation  for  an  actress.  As  for  its  atmos- 
phere and  the  calling  of  its  heroine,  Romance  bears 
a  marked  resemblance  to  Clyde  Fitch's  Captain 
Jinks.  The  main  situation  of  the  impetuous  priest 
and  the  fair  sinner,  besides,  the  experienced  theatre- 
goer has  long  since  numbered  among  his  old  friends. 
Yet  the  play  as  a  whole  is  stamped  with  its  author's 
individuality,  and  it  reveals  him  in  a  new  and 

promising  light. 

93 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

No  discussion  of  our  recent  realistic  drama 

would   be    complete   without   reference    to    Mr. 

Charles  Kenyon's  three-act  play  of  life  in  the  slums, 

produced  with  Miss  Margaret  lUington  in  the 

leading  part,  under  the  title  of  Kindling.    Here  is 

a  drama  of  unquestioned  power  and  sincerity,  as 

it  is  of  distinctly  unpleasant  subject-matter.    How 

it  was  kept  alive  by  the  determined  and  generous 

efforts    of   art-loving   playgoers   is   well   known. 

Doubtless,  if  the  author  had  expended  as  much 

talent  as  he  has  here  displayed,  upon  characters 

and  surroundings  more  inherently  attractive,  he 

would  have  won  a  more  pronounced  victory.    As 

it  is,  he  has  produced  a  moving  and  a  well-built 

play,  as  free  from  mawkish  sentimentality  as  it 

is  instinct  with  true  feeling.    In  characterization, 

too,  Kindling  is  remarkably  successful.     If  the 

stevedore  and  his  wife  be  glorified  somewhat  above 

actuahty,  such  idealization  is  of  a  sort  that  may 

be  gladly  welcomed.     Indeed,  realism  can  never 

achieve  the  largest  measure  of  success  until  it 

adopts  those  principles  of  selection,  proportion, 

and  emphasis  which  other  schools  of  dramatic 

writing  have  so  long  ago  tried  and  proved. 
94 


THE      AMERICANS 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  achievements  of  the 

American  theatre  thus  far  noted  are  principally  in 

the  direction  of  that  most  facile  of  the  dramatic 

categories,  the  realistic  melodrama.    Everywhere 

the  quest  is  for  novelty,  for  striking  situations,  for 

that   natural   son   of    "yellow   journahsm,"    the 

"punch,"    and    for    mere    slavish    photography. 

Perhaps,  after  aU,  the  most  typical  exponent  of 

such  national  drama  as  America  thus  far  boasts 

is  Mr.  David  Belasco.    This  "wizard  of  the  stage" 

triumphs  through  an  actual  subordination  of  the 

dramatic  to  the  merely  pictorial,  and  so  is  always 

laboring   to   estabUsh   a   false   standard   of   art. 

Naturally,  he  is  the  playwright  of  the  ephemeral. 

He  attains  his  "effects"  through  a  most  sedulous 

attention  to  details.    He  carries  this  policy  to  the 

extreme, — for  instance,  of  accurately  labelling  the 

nursery  stock  shown  in  the  setting  of  The  Return 

of  Peter  Grimm,  not  for  the  benefit  of  the  audience, 

since  the  labels  are  much  too  small  to  be  read  across 

the  footlights,  but  "for  the  reaction  such  faithful 

accuracy  will  have  upon  the  players  themselves." 

In  other  words,  Mr.  Belasco  apparently  seeks  to 

make  his  actors  forget  that  they  are  on  the  stage, 

95 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

in  order  that  '^  real  life  '^  may  be  the  more  absolutely- 
approximated.  If  he  were  equally  careful  and 
equally  capable  in  the  matter  of  discerning  the 
truth  of  the  figures  and  the  incidents  he  portrays, 
his  value  to  dramatic  art  would  be  a  hundredfold 
greater.  As  it  is,  the  magic  of  his  wand  rarely 
evokes  anything  more  noteworthy  than  inherently 
false  incidents  glozed  over  with  an  amazing  air  of 
actuality.  In  The  Case  of  Becky,  for  example,  we 
have  a  highly  artificial,  not  to  say  conventional, 
melodrama  presented  with  the  utmost  appearance 
of  verisimilitude.  Of  course,  The  Case  of  Becky 
was  not  actually  written  by  Mr.  Belasco;  but  this 
producer-playwright  is  so  Shakespearean,  in  the 
one  respect,  at  least,  that  he  is  omnivorous  as  to 
sources,  that  we  have  come  to  regard  whatever  he 
sponsors  as  as  much  his  own  as  it  may  be  anybody 
else's.  In  almost  all  the  plays  presented  under  his 
direction  there  is  fundamental  hollowness  and  only 
a  superficial  wizardry.  Mr.  Belasco  is  a  past- 
master  of  the  tricks  of  his  craft,  of  course, — the 
Cagliostro  of  the  modern  stage.  He  is  at  his  best 
in  such  moments  as  that  curtain  in  The  Concert, 

where  the  entirely  wordless  chess  game  between 
96  . 


THE      AMERICANS 

the  recently  estranged  husband  and  wife  tells  the 
dramatic  story  of  reconciliation  beyond  the  possi- 
bilities of  any  other  conceivable  device.  As  for 
Belasco  at  his  worst,  that  means  not  only  the  drag- 
ging in  of  bizarre  settings,  as  in  the  last  act  of 
The  Governor's  Lady,  or  the  physician's  laboratory 
in  The  Case  of  Becky,  but  also  the  remorseless  dis- 
tortion of  human  motives  and  character  for  the 
sake  of  purely  factitious  situations — interesting 
entertainment,  usually,  but  in  no  sense  life. 

The  Return  of  Peter  Grimm  is  a  typical  specimen 
of  sentimental  claptrap  designed  to  make  a  sure, 
if  false,  appeal  to  the  emotions.  Peter  himself,  in- 
tended to  be  lovable,  becomes  a  self-centred  tyrant 
who  deserves  in  "the  world  beyond"  to  imdergo 
experiences  more  like  those  hinted  at  by  that  far 
more  famous  revenant,  the  elder  Hamlet.  Nephew 
Frederick,  again,  is  an  unconscionable  villain,  also 
because  the  plot  demands  it.  Notwithstanding  all 
these  sacrifices  that  are  made  to  it,  this  plot,  by 
the  way,  is  loose- jointed  and  episodic  in  the  ex- 
treme. But,  even  if  the  characters  are  false  and 
the  structure  flabby,  the  firelight  flickers,  the  rain 

pours,  and  the  lightning  flashes  just  at  the  proper 
7  87 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

moments,  and  there  is  "effect,"  in  lieu  of  veracity, 
written  large  across  an  evening's  diversion.  More- 
over, there  is  a  sjrmpathetic  part  for  a  highly- 
gifted  character  actor,  whose  talents,  at  least  com- 
mercially, redeemed  the  original  production  of 
the  play.  The  fact  is  that  the  subject  of  The 
Return  of  Peter  Grimm  is  far  too  profound  for  its 
author's  abilities. 

It  has  been  the  fashion  in  latter  days  to  decry 
the  acting  of  the  time,  contrasting  it  with  the  finer 
histrionism  of  a  generation  or  two  ago.  However, 
when  we  see  players  like  Mr.  Warfield,  Mrs.  Fiske, 
and  Miss  Anglin  furnished  with  no  better  settings 
for  their  abilities  than  such  plays  as  The  Return  of 
Peter  Grimm,  The  High  Road,  Mrs.  Bumstead-Leigh, 
Egypt,  and  Green  Stockings,  this  kind  of  condem- 
nation should  logically  be  diverted  into  a  different 
channel.  Certain  it  is  that  the  more  important 
forms  of  the  drama,  such  for  instance  as  comedy 
of  manners,  have  rarely  attained  distinction  in  the 
hands  of  American  playwrights.  Clyde  Fitch,  in 
the  midst  of  much  theatricism,  contributed  his 
occasional  thumbnail  sketches;  and  a  few  other 

writers,  notably  Messrs.  Langdon  Mitchell  and 
98 


THE      AMERICANS 

George  Ade,  have  added  further  portraiture  of 
types  to  our  gallery  of  comedy.  Mr.  Ade's  The 
College  Widow  and  The  County  Chairman  certainly 
present  a  collection  of  easily-recognized  small- 
town denizens,  from  the  blatant  sophomore  to  the 
village  milliner  who  ^' meets  so  many  travelling 
gent 'men."  Humor  and  the  pleasure  of  this 
prompt  recognition  are  the  emotions  these  char- 
acters evoke.  We  Americans  are  "a  nation  of 
farmers."  *'The  town  population  is  tied  by  a 
thousand  threads  of  sentiment  to  the  soil.  Hence 
the  success  of  a  very  moderate  play,  if  it  only 
appeals  to  the  affectionate  associations  which  cling 
to  the  'old  homestead,'  the  simple  village  maiden 
with  the  big  hat,  the  well  and  the  water  dipper,  the 
small  but  worthy  landholder,  and  the  harvest 
home."  Mr.  Ade  has  recorded  from  boyhood  and 
student  days  dozens  of  these  familiar  types.  He 
knows  how  to  present  them  with  a  genial  emphasis 
upon  their  comic  aspects;  and  in  meeting  them 
once  again  we  are  too  much  interested  to  note  that 
they  do  not  unfold  for  us  any  very  novel  story  or 
enforce  any  very  significant  theme.  They  seem 
genuine,  and  they  serve  for  a  kindly  satire.    How- 


THE     DRAMA     TO-DAY 

ever,  when  they  have  been  called  upon  to  repeat 
themselves  in  later  plays,  they  have  eventually 
palled. 

In  The  New  York  Idea,  Mr.  Langdon  Mitchell 
has  drawn  some  highly  amusing  and  familiar  types 
of  a  frivolous  '' society,'*  participating  in  a  frothy 
satirical  comedy.  The  ''idea"  is  that  of  ''tandem 
polygamy."  The  heroine,  after  some  bitter  divorce 
experiences,  returns  to  her  first  love,  who  believes 
that,  "having  kicked  the  stuffing  out  of  the  matri- 
monial buggy,"  she  will  now  settle  down  to  a  steady 
gait.  Working  with  a  theme  full  of  the  possibilities 
of  high  purpose,  Mr.  Mitchell  gives  it  a  purely 
fantastic  treatment. 

Much  more  recently,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Frederic 
Hatton,  in  their  Years  of  Discretion,  have  produced 
yet  another  American  example  of  the  comedy  of 
manners.  Brilliant  of  dialogue  and  clear-cut  of 
characterization,  this  play  is  a  picture  out  of  Van- 
ity Fair,  as  all  such  drama  must  be,  and  kindly  of 
spirit  as  it  is  gentle  of  application.  In  view  of  aU 
this,  it  is  the  more  to  be  regretted  that  the  theme 
itself — an  ancient  one — as  employed  in  this  in- 
stance is  to  many  repellent:  the  idea  of  a  middle- 
100 


THE     AMERICANS 

aged  widow,  the  mother  of  grown  children,  con- 
ceiving a  fretful  hatred  for  the  tedium  of  con- 
ventional life  and  dashing  into  frantic  excesses  of 
worldliness,  it  seems,  can  be  amusing  only  at  the 
expense  of  ideals  and  sentiments  we  have  long 
regarded  as  sacred.  The  rebellion  of  Frank  R. 
Stockton's  renowned  ''monk  of  Siberia"  is  highly 
excusable.  The  heroine  of  Mid-Channel  is  not 
only  childish  but  of  a  nature  meagre  and  common- 
place. But  the  widow  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hatton's 
play  is  a  mother  who  has  lived  past  forty  without 
great  intellectual  or  emotional  excitement,  and 
whose  starvation  for  this  stimulus  at  so  late  a  date 
can  scarcely  be  accounted  for  on  any  grounds  not 
pathological.  When,  having  for  long  coquetted 
desperately  with  a  necessarily  disgusting  group  of 
middle-aged  philanderers,  she  is  finally  manhandled 
by  a  rougher  one  of  them,  the  situation,  in  spite 
of  histrionic  emphasis  upon  the  trivial,  becomes 
nearly  intolerable.  The  indiscretions  of  Lady 
Teazle  result  in  no  such  unpleasantness,  and  the 
circumstances  of  Lady  Teazle's  triflings  are  far 
more  sympathetic. 

In  The  Chorus  Lady,  The  Travelling  Salesman, 

101 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

and  The  Commuters,  Mr.  James  Forbes  has  treated 
life  on  the  stage,  "on  the  road,"  and  in  the  suburbs 
with  much  slangy  vivacity  and  shrewd  observation. 
Technically,  however,  all  three  plays  are  sopho- 
moric.  In  The  Man  from  Home,  Booth  Tarkington 
and  Harry  Leon  Wilson  make  a  notable  contribu- 
tion to  what  Mr.  Walter  Pritchard  Eaton  felici- 
tously denominates  "the  American  comedy  of  bad 
manners" — in  this  case  a  conventional  melodra- 
matic narrative  animated  by  one  individuahzed 
provincial  figure  of  much  native  wit  and  rustic 
ill-breeding. 

Other  Americans  of  to-day  whose  work  deserves 
mention,  at  least  for  its  promise,  are  Rachel 
Crothers,  George  M.  Cohan,  Thompson  Buchanan, 
Winchell  Smith,  Marion  Fairfax,  Richard  Walton 
Tully,  Edward  Knoblauch,  and  Edward  Locke. 
None  of  them  has  blazed  any  especially  new  trail, 
however,  or  even  made  any  extraordinary  contri- 
bution to  that  distinctly  modern  type  of  drama 
which  is  ultra-realistic  as  to  details  and  facts  and 
usually  ultra-conventional  and  unreal  as  to  funda- 
mental veracity. 

On   the  whole,   American   drama  has  made 

102 


THE      AMERICANS 

notable  progress  in  this  direction  of  the  semblance 
of  reality  often  without  the  substance.  Our  stage 
to-day  is,  for  the  most  part,  thoroughly  Belasco- 
ized.  That  means  that  commercial  rather  than 
artistic  ideals  too  often  animate  our  producers, 
authors,  and  players;  that  novelty  is  more  sought 
after  than  any  real  criticism  or  reflection  of  life; 
that  theatrical  effectiveness — the  "punch" — is 
often  considered  more  desirable  than  the  truth. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  are  distinct  grounds  for 
hopefulness.  In  the  first  place,  our  playgoing 
public  is  becoming  rapidly  more  critical  and  dis- 
cerning. A  tawdry  imitation  of  the  real  wiU  not 
long  continue  to  satisfy,  when  the  difference 
between  the  real  and  the  imitation  is  clearly  and 
generally  understood.  In  the  second  place,  our 
playwrights  are  not  only  realizing  this  changing 
attitude  on  the  part  of  the  public,  but  are  also,  in 
many  cases,  directing  and  hastening  the  change. 
The  tendency  toward  a  decreasing  insistence  upon 
plot,  and  a  correspondingly  stronger  emphasis  upon 
character  portrayal,  is  one  of  the  most  hopeful 
theatrical  signs  of  the  times.    Moreover,  the  reign 

of  the  conventional  seems  nearing  its  conclusion. 

103 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

Even  the  ''happy  ending '*  is  no  longer  inevitable, 
while  many  of  the  antiquated  devices  of  nineteenth- 
century  theatricism  are  becoming  rarer  upon  the 
boards.  The  stage  and  its  technique  are  being 
taken  seriously  by  men  and  women  of  marked 
ideals  and  often  of  rigid  training.  Eminent 
scholars  are  lending  their  thoroughgoing  aid  to 
the  development  of  a  constructive  criticism  and  an 
expert  craftsmanship  far  removed  from  the  purely 
journalistic  and  commercial  standards  of  a  decade 
or  two  ago.  Not  only  writers,  but  also  producers 
and  players,  are  working  more  and  more  with 
their  eyes  fixed  upon  life,  and  less  and  less  with 
exclusive  reference  to  the  theatre.  In  fact,  from 
many  reliable  indications,  the  drama  in  America 
seems  to  be  coming  gradually  into  its  own  as  a 
distinct  art,  unsurpassed  by  any  other  in  its  possi- 
bihties  ethical  and  aesthetic. 


104 


IV 


THE  BRITISH 

BETWEEN  1830  and  1900  about  twenty- 
four  hundred  new  plays  were  put  on  at 
'  London  theatres.  Many  of  these  were 
burlesques,  vaudevilles,  operas,  and  translations, 
particularly  from  the  French  of  Scribe,  Dumas 
(both  father  and  son),  Sardou,  Labiche,  Halevy, 
and  Meilhac.  Among  the  twenty-four  hundred,  too, 
were  dramatizations  of  novels,  such  as  the  Waverley 
series  and  Dickens.  To  this  long  list  of  plays,  Dion 
Boucicault,  among  some  four  hundred  stage  works, 
contributed  The  Shaugraun,  The  Colleen  Bavm,  Lon- 
don Assurance,  and  Rip  Van  Winkle;  Tom  Taylor, 
Our  American  Cousin,  The  Ticket-of-Leave  Man,  and 
nearly  a  score  of  others;  Tom  Robertson,  Ours, 
Caste,  Society,  School.  Of  these  last-named  come- 
dies, indeed,  three  thousand  performances  were 
given  within  twenty  years.  With  the  possible  excep- 
tion of  Caste,  they  are  all  apparently  now  dead  to 

the  stage.    The  actual  dramatic  convention  of  the 

105 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

Victorian  era  proves,  upon  examination,  funda- 
mentally factitious.  That  Caste  lives  in  occa- 
sional revival  is  a  tribute  to  its  unique  human 
qualities:  they  overshadow  the  absurd  old  stagey 
tricks  so  abundant  in  the  drama  of  the  sixties. 
Indeed,  Robertson's  work,  ever  kindly,  genial,  and 
carefully  planned,  renovated  the  dramatic  stand- 
ards in  his  day,  just  as  Goldsmith's  Good-Natured 
Man  had  routed  the  sickly  sentimentality  per- 
vading the  plays  of  his  time. 

Present-day  English  playwriting  of  seeming 
importance  is,  for  the  most  part,  in  the  hands  of 
Sir  Arthur  Wing  Pinero,  Messrs.  Henry  Arthur 
Jones,  James  M.  Barrie,  George  Bernard  Shaw, 
John  Galsworthy,  Granville  Barker,  and  possibly 
of  Alfred  Sutro,  Cosmo  Hamilton,  Haddon  Cham- 
bers, Arnold  Bennett,  B.  Macdonald  Hastings,  and 
Stephen  Phillips.  It  is  a  curious  and  doubtless 
significant  fact  that  the  one  blanket  classification 
which  covers  the  largest  part  of  the  work  of  most 
of  these  playwrights  is  that  of  the  "problem  play." 
Of  course,  this  generalization  leaves  out,  among 
others,  both  Mr.  Barrie  and  Mr.  Phillips,  the  one 

being  concerned  rather  with  comedy  of  manners 
106 


THE      BRITISH 

and  the  fantastic,  the  other  with  the  poetic  drama. 
Nevertheless,  since  so  many  of  the  playwrights 
named  are  devoted,  in  part,  if  not  wholly,  to  the 
problem  play,  it  cannot  be  inappropriate  to  give 
that  genre  some  preliminary  consideration. 

In  the  first  place,  as  to  a  definition.  Very  many 
different  kinds  of  plays  in  quite  as  many  keys 
may  still  be  grouped  under  the  "  problem  "  heading. 
What  binds  them  all  together  is  that  distinctive 
strain  of  nineteenth  century  literature,  the  moral. 
Problem  plays  deal  with  problems  of  right  and 
wrong  in  human  conduct,  problems  which  con- 
ventionality and  civilization  have  not  definitely 
solved,  however  much  they  may  pretend  to  have 
done  so.  The  writer  of  problem  plays,  indeed, 
approaches  his  task  in  the  conviction  that  life  is 
a  deal  more  complicated  than  old  systems  of  sim- 
plified ethics  have  often  realized,  and  in  the  knowl- 
edge that  this  very  complexity  must  give  rise  to 
questions  for  the  present  frequently  unanswerable. 
Obviously,  this  form  of  writing  is  bound  up  with 
a  characteristic  which  at  least  one  school  of  thinkers 
has  regarded  as  a  defect — conscious  moral  content 

or  aim. 

107 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

Without  turning  aside  to  participate  in  the 
endless  controversy  upon  this  point,  we  may  simply 
say  in  the  beginning  that  excessive  moralizing  has 
destroyed  the  efficacy  of  countless  problem  plays, 
just  as  it  has  defeated  the  purpose  of  so  much  other 
art.  And  at  the  same  time  we  are  bound  to  admit 
— adapting  Professor  Bliss  Perry's  simile — that 
drama  divorced  utterly  from  the  moral  is  as  lame 
a  bird  as  ever  tried  to  soar  with  a  broken  pinion. 
Mr.  George  Bernard  Shaw  deliberately  chooses  to 
weight  down  the  dialogue  of  his  plays  with  lengthy 
expressions  of  his  own  views  on  socialism,  vivi- 
section, or  what-not.  Even  so  rare  a  technician 
as  Ibsen  freights  the  conversations  of  Ghosts  with 
similar  personal  philosophizings.  Mr.  Shaw  looks 
upon  the  dramatist,  indeed,  as  ''a,  critic  of  life 
as  well  as  of  art."  To  him  the  artist  must  be  a 
teacher,  or  else  a  waster  of  energy.  Self-conscious 
moral  forces  must  employ  art  for  the  uplifting  of 
the  race.  The  writer  of  problem  plays  is  a  pitiless 
critic,  above  all,  of  moral  convention. 

The  chief  target  of  the  problem  dramatist,  as 
of  the  social  satirist,  is  smug  respectability  en- 
gendered by  conventional  morality.  Often,  too, 
108 


THE      BRITISH 

institutions  of  conventional  origin  are  vigorously 
attacked.  Habits  of  life  and  thought,  as  well  as  of 
conduct,  based  on  mere  traditionary  authority, 
form  another  point  of  onslaught.  It  is  obvious, 
of  course,  that  much  of  our  ''morality"  is  merely, 
as  Macaire  puts  it,  ''this  side  of  the  frontier." 
Time  and  place  are  potent  factors  in  its  determina- 
tion. The  institution  of  marriage,  for  example, 
largely  artificial  in  character,  varies  greatly  the 
world  over,  and  has  varied  throughout  history. 
The  changes  in  emphasis  and  attitude  which  mark 
the  slow  metamorphosis  of  conventional  ethics  are 
what  the  problem  play-writer  most  frequently 
intends.  Conservatism  clings  to  the  outworn  shell 
of  what  was  once  expedient  and  is  stiU  respectable; 
radicalism  thrusts  it  violently  aside  and  reaches 
out  for  something  better  adapted  to  a  different 
set  of  conditions.  Like  some  ever-growing  creature, 
society  is  forever  bursting  an  old  shell  and  secret- 
ing a  new  one.  The  writer  of  problem  plays  usu- 
ally seeks  to  accelerate  this  process.  He  applies  to 
the  moribund  convention  a  pitiless  test  of  eflSciency 
and  prescribes  for  it  immediate  euthanasia. 

What    are    some    of   the    common    problems 

109 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

attacked  by  the  dramatist  of  this  school?  There 
is,  to  begin  with,  the  problem  of  human  happiness. 
What  are  the  chief  opponents  of  happiness? 
Slavery  to  greed,  lust,  ambition,  selfishness,  hypoc- 
risy. These  diabolical  forces  are  to  be  portrayed, 
in  both  their  action  and  their  reaction,  in  order 
that  men  may  pause  and,  looking  on,  understand. 
Take  social  hypocrisy,  for  example.  It  is,  with 
many,  a  subtle,  congenital  habit  of  thought  and 
life.  Sudermann  in  Die  Heimat,  like  Ibsen  in 
An  Enemy  of  the  People  and  Pillars  of  Society, 
uses  the  scalpel  ruthlessly  upon  this  ingrained  evil. 
So  the  problem  of  social  corruption  and  of  heredi- 
tary predispositions  is  dealt  with  in  Ghosts  and  in 
A  DolVs  House.  Most  of  the  world's  great  re- 
formers have  been  men  who  realized  the  outworn 
condition  of  the  old  and  the  need  for  the  new  in 
moral  conventions.  They  have  seen  how  these 
agreements  of  expediency,  become  stiff  and  rigid 
with  age,  place  humanity  in  a  strait- jacket  and 
prevent  initiative  and  individuality.  And  against 
these  confining  influences  the  writers  of  problem 
plays,  like  aU  other  reformers,  are  perpetually  at 

war.     The  fundamental  problem  becomes,  then, 
110 


THE      BRITISH 

the  everlasting  problem  of  the  one  and  the  many. 
This  is  the  basis  of  nearly  all  of  Ibsen,  as  it  is  the 
gist  of  Die  Heimat  and  Die  Versunkene  Glocke. 

In  the  work  of  England's  leading  latter-day 
dramatist,  Sir  Arthur  Wing  Pinero,  the  problem 
usually  exploited  is  that  of  sex  relationship.  The 
student  of  his  plays  will  note  that  his  chief  char- 
acters are  nearly  all  women,  and  that  the  dominant 
note  is  the  tragedy  of  the  weaker  sex, — ^woman  as 
the  victim  of  circumstances  largely  beyond  her 
control.  To  put  it  more  specifically,  the  so-called 
''double  standard"  of  morals  is  at  the  bottom  of 
the  majority  of  Pinero's  dramas. 

One  inevitably  calls  to  mind  that  most  impres- 
sive figure  in  all  the  Pinerian  gallery,  Paula  Tan- 
queray.  "A  young  woman  of  about  twenty-seven, 
beautiful,  fresh,  innocent-looking,"  she  is  yet  the 
haunted  victim  of  that  unescapable  ogre,  a  Past. 
She  offers  her  written  confession  to  the  man  who 
is  about  to  substitute  her  for  his  first  wife,  a  bride 
of  ice.  But  he  bums  the  confession  unread,  and 
they  enter  into  that  matrimonial  contract  which 
is  the  defiance  of  public  opinion,  if  not  of  absolute 

ethics.     There  is  that  innate  in  Paula  that  makes 

111 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

for  unhappiness.  She  is  restless,  vain,  petulant, 
jealous.  At  moments  she  is  capable  of  bursts  of 
generous  feeling;  but  for  the  most  part,  self- 
concentration  makes  anything  like  renunciation 
impossible.  Besides,  the  Past  has  done  its  dead- 
ening work  upon  such  sensibilities  and  capacities 
as  she  was  originally  endowed  with.  When  she  is 
brought  up  face  to  face  with  an  intolerable  situa- 
tion bred  of  that  same  relentless  Past,  she  can  but 
take  refuge  in  self-destruction.  Suicide  is  not 
confession  with  Paula,  however;  she  has  at  least 
the  courage  to  tell  her  husband  the  whole  truth 
before  she  flies  to  the  tragic  destiny  her  own 
actions — and  heaven  only  knows  how  much  of 
heredity,  environment,  and  smug  conventional 
morality — have  created  for  her. 

As  for  the  protagonist  of  Iris,  she  is  to  some 
extent  the  victim  of  so  precise  an  influence  as  a 
deceased  and  jealous  husband's  will.  By  its  terms 
this  beautiful  and  luxury-loving  young  widow  may 
not  remarry  and  retain  its  benefits.  Of  course,  she 
loves  a  penniless  young  man,  Laurence  Trenwith, 
and  guilelessly  offers  him  financial  aid.     He  is 

strong  enough,  however,  to  resist  the  temptation 
112 


THE      BRITISH 

and  to  go  off  to  America  to  fight  for  his  career. 
When  a  defaulting  trustee  deprives  Iris  of  her 
income,  a  millionaire  lover,  Maldonado,  exposes 
her  to  temptation  by  leaving  in  her  hands  a  book 
of  signed  cheques.  Significantly,  she  falls  to  this 
lure  through  an  impulse  of  generosity  when  a 
fellow-victim  of  the  defaulter  appeals  to  her  for 
assistance.  Thereafter,  much  as  Laura  Murdock, 
in  The  Easiest  Way,  was  later  to  do,  Iris  lapses 
into  that  weakening  penury  Maldonado  has  fore- 
seen and  desired.  Her  heart  is  true  to  Laurence 
Trenwith,  but  she  yields  to  the  stress  of  circum- 
stances and  finally  to  the  millionaire.  When 
Trenwith,  like  Laura  Murdock's  lover,  returns, 
she  expects  his  forgiveness;  but  she  has  lost  not 
only  him  but  also  Maldonado,  who,  in  jealous  fury, 
drives  her  back  to  poverty. 

Sir  Arthur  Wing  Pinero  is  the  first  living 
English  master  of  dramatic  technique.  Iris,  for 
example,  is  told  absorbingly,  step  by  step,  through 
logical  development  and  clear-cut  characteriza- 
tion, to  a  powerful  climax.  "The  long  arm  of 
coincidence"  is  called  into  play  at  least  once;  but, 

after  all,  because  coincidence  has  been  overworked, 
8  113 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

must  it  be  banished  from  the  stage  forever?  There 
really  is  a  great  deal  of  it  in  actual  life,  and  it  is 
often  most  dramatic. 

Before  Iris,  in  His  House  in  Order,  Pinero  had 
shown  himself  capable  as  a  technician.  This 
latter  comedy  is  the  forerunner  of  other  and  even 
stronger  plays  of  middle-class  English  life.  Cer- 
tainly it  rises  admirably  to  a  striking  climax  when 
Hilary  first  persuades  the  mistreated  wife  Nina  to 
relinquish  her  superb  revenge  and  then  promptly 
takes  it  for  her.  Less  convincing  is  Letty,  a  natural- 
istic study  with  an  English  working-girl  for  its 
heroine.  Her  salvation  at  the  last  moment  is  the 
result  of  sheer  accident,  rather  than  a  logical  out- 
come of  conditions  within  or  without.  Eleventh- 
hour  right-about-facing  is  rarely  satisfactory  on  the 
stage,  when  it  has  no  more  carefully  laid  foundation 
than  in  the  case  of  Letty.  The  Gay  Lord  Quex 
shows  a  marked  technical  advance  over  any  of 
this  author's  plays  so  far  mentioned.  Indeed,  it 
squeezes  the  full  emotional  content  out  of  char- 
acter and  situation  with  rare  address.  The  antag- 
onists here  are,  curiously,  a  rakish  nobleman  and 

a  manicure.     It  is  a  battle  of  wits,  and  Sophie 
114 


THE      BRITISH 

Fulgamey  wins,  although  it  is  against  no  mean 
opponent  that  she  has  been  pitted.  To  save  her 
foster-sister,  she  tries  to  lure  Quex  into  a  compro- 
mising flirtation;  and  her  resources  are  no  less 
adroit  than  her  scheme  is  daring.  Accordingly, 
she  wins  our  sympathies  with  far  more  readiness 
than  does  Theo,  in  The  Benefit  of  the  Doubt,  though 
the  author  puts  forth  a  valiant  effort  in  this  latter 
heroine's  behalf. 

''The  dramatist,"  Sir  Arthur  is  quoted  as  say- 
ing, "is  only  the  mouthpiece  of  his  characters, 
plus,  of  course,  his  knowledge  of  the  technique  of 
the  theatre,  which  enables  him  to  manoeuvre  them. 
So  he  must  assume  an  impersonal  attitude  toward 
them  and  permit  them,  so  to  speak,  to  develop 
out  of  themselves.  But  logic  is  the  groundwork 
of  every  play  as  well  as  of  every  character — the 
immutable  law  of  cause  and  effect.  Is  it  not  so  in 
life?"  To  write  a  play,  Pinero  takes  never  less 
than  a  year.  It  is  as  though  the  logic  of  life  could 
hardly  be  thought  out  for  an  entire  drama  in  less 
time.  Certainly,  in  the  case  of  many  a  lesser  light, 
hasty  composition  has  been  concomitant  with  the 

illogical.     Following   his   stated   policy,    Pinero, 

115 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

since,  as  an  obscure  actor,  he  made  his  debut  with 
the  one-act  comedy,  Two  Hundred  a  Year,  has 
produced  thirty-eight  original  plays,  in  addition  to 
several  adaptations.  Throughout  the  series  there  is 
visible  an  almost  unbroken  advance  in  power  and 
skill.  After  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray,  and  per- 
haps The  Notorious  Mrs.  Ebhsmith,  we  should  men- 
tion Mid-Channel,  at  least,  and  The  Thunderbolt. 

''I  no  longer  attempt  to  interest  any  special 
audiences,"  he  is  reported  to  have  said  in  a  recent 
interview.  ''I  like  to  write  from  within  myself, 
so  to  speak.  Latterly,  I  have  been  rather  serious, 
but  some  day  I  shall  return  to  a  lighter  vein." 
It  would  appear  that  his  seriousness  runs  to  a 
scathing  analysis  of  the  hypocrisy  and  depraved 
selfishness  of  a  certain  type  of  middle-class  English- 
man and  Englishwoman.  These  are  the  people  he 
deals  with,  at  all  events,  even  more  bitterly  than 
he  did  in  His  House  in  Order,  in  Mid-Channel  and 
The  Thunderbolt.  Obviously,  serious  plays  dealing 
with  sordid,  unsympathetic  characters  are  not 
fundamentally  calculated  to  make  a  wide  appeal, 
at  least  not  among  a  play-going  public  which 

rarely,    if    ever,    distinguishes    between    subject- 
116 


THE      BRITISH 

matter  and  art.  "Once  in  a  long  time,"  Pinero 
himself  explains,  "the  playwright  strikes  the 
happy  medium.  In  other  words,  he  writes  the 
play  that  can  be  big  and  powerful  and  at  the  same 
time  restful  and  entertaining." 

The  problem  of  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray  is 
that  of  a  woman's  struggle  with  a  deplorable  past. 
The  problem  of  The  Notorious  Mrs.  Ehbsmith  is 
the  struggle  of  a  man  and  a  woman  to  live  together 
in  intellectual  companionship.  The  problem  of 
Mid-Channel  is  the  problem  of  the  marital  mis- 
understandings of  middle  life.  Zoe  Blundell  and 
her  husband  have  no  children  and  no  mutual 
interests.  They  are  both  selfish  and  neurotic. 
Frequent  quarrels  end  in  a  separation,  the  effects 
of  which  are  shown,  first  on  the  wife  and  then 
on  the  husband.  Eventually  they  are  brought 
together  for  a  reconciliation.  The  husband  con- 
fesses to  infidelity  and  is  forgiven;  but,  when  the 
wife  makes  a  similar  admission,  to  her  surprise 
she  is  sent  back  to  her  young  lover,  whom  she  has 
previously  advised  to  marry  a  debutante.  Finding 
that  her  counsel  has  been  followed,  she  flings  herself 

from  a  high  balcony  and  so  ends  her  wasted  life. 

117 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

The  prescription  of  Augustus  Thomas  for 
writing  a  successful  play  is  said  to  begin,  "Take 
some  interesting  people,  and  present  them  in 
interesting  situations."  The  interest  that  attaches 
to  the  unpleasant  Blundell  household  is  naturally 
limited.  When  both  people  and  plot  are  uncom- 
fortable, no  amount  of  excellent  technique,  as  a 
rule,  will  save  a  play  in  the  popular  esteem.  Art 
has  perhaps  saved  Othello,  in  the  face  of  similar 
handicaps;  but  it  rarely  duplicates  the  feat  in  the 
hands  of  any  lesser  dramatist.  Mid-Channel  is  most 
praiseworthy  in  structure,  tight  of  joints,  and  eco- 
nomical, as  Pinero's  work  usually  is.  The  figures 
he  puts  forward  are  searchingly  dissected.  They  are 
shown,  perhaps  not  in  much  objective  action,  but 
in  a  well-depicted  and  climactic  internal  struggle. 
Sir  Arthur's  mastery  of  fluent  and  constructive  dia- 
logue has  rarely  been  exhibited  to  better  advantage 
than  in  this  play.  In  fact,  his  artistry  is  so  fine 
that  one  can  scarcely  help  deploring  that,  in  '^  writ- 
ing from  within  himself"  of  late,  he  should  fall  so 
much  into  an  Ibsenic  strain  of  pessimism. 

Moreover,  in  Mid-Channel  there  is  a  serious 

defect  which  doubtless  has  militated  against  the 
118 


THE      BRITISH 

success  of  the  play,  as  it  has  inevitably  lessened  its 
value.  The  dramatist  has  proposed  for  his  problem 
that  of  the  "mid-channel"  shoals  and  rocks  of  mari- 
tal life,  particularly  where  motherhood  has  been 
averted  through  selfishness.  His  business,  then, 
was  remorselessly  to  exhibit  such  perils  and  their 
dramatic  significance.  Instead  of  giving  us  the 
tragedy  of  the  childless  woman,  however,  he  has 
allowed  himself  to  be  shunted  off  onto  a  conven- 
tional motif  of  adultery,  taken  from  the  French 
stage.  There  are  doubtless  Zoe  Blundells  enough 
in  actual  English  and  American  life  j  but  few  of  them 
are  sufficiently  morbid  and  neurotic  to  pursue  the 
course  this  unfortunate  adopts  in  Pinero's  play. 

In  The  Thunderbolt^  written  before  though  not 
produced  till  after  Mid-Channel,  the  problem 
would  seem  to  be  that  of  the  demoralization 
effected  in  certain  natures  by  the  death  of  a  rich 
relative.  Manifestly,  this  is  not  new  material;  and 
Sir  Arthur  has,  in  fact,  resorted  to  many  familiar 
expedients  in  his  relentless  exhibition  of  a  group 
of  sordid  provincial  Britons.  There  is  the  stolen 
will  as  a  peg  to  hang  the  plot  on;  and  this  plot  is 

made  up  of  scenes  of  confession  and  cross-examina- 

119 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

tion.  The  author,  however,  has  never  done  better 
work  in  play-building.  He  opens  with  a  stage  full 
of  people,  all  of  whom  he  at  once  identifies  to  the 
audience,  while  at  the  same  time  he  carries  forward 
exposition  and  narrative  without  apparent  delay. 
There  is  no  love  story  in  The  Thunderbolt.  At  the 
close  of  the  play,  presumably  as  a  sop  to  the  sup- 
posed popular  demand,  a  romance  is  hinted  at 
between  the  girl  Helen  and  the  curate  Trist. 
Meanwhile,  the  final  curtain  is  delayed  for  some 
time  after  the  close  of  the  plot-interest.  Indeed, 
this  final  curtain  is  made  to  fall  upon  a  stage  that 
has  been  left  empty  for  about  a  minute,  giving  the 
effect  of  the  incompleteness  of  a  play  which  mirrors 
an  incomplete  section  of  life. 

As  for  that  appropriately  short-lived  teapot 
tempest,  Preserving  Mr.  Panmure,  being  farcical 
material  developed  in  a  comedy  treatment,  it  fell 
between  two  stools  and  served  to  reconcile  play- 
goers generally  to  its  author's  latter-day  serious- 
ness. In  its  successor.  The  Mind-the-Paint  Girl, 
the  problem  seems  to  be  that  rather  prevalent 
one — ^in  England,  at  least — of  marriages  between 

the  chorus  and  the  peerage.    As  a  play,  it  is  re- 
120 


THE      BRITISH 

markable  for  its  leisurely  structure.  It  requires 
two  acts  and  part  of  a  third  to  lay  the  groundwork 
of  exposition  and  atmosphere  for  a  single  ''strong" 
situation.  A  fourth  act  is  then  appended  to  carry 
the  much-desired ' '  happy  ending. ' '  Lily  Parradell, 
of  the  Pandora  Theatre,  is  the  play's  contribution 
to  Pinero's  gallery  of  women.  We  see  her  first  at 
home,  and  then  at  the  theatre.  Two  lovers,  a 
viscount  and  a  captain,  battle  for  her  hand,  and 
so  supply  a  climax  for  Act  III.  Ultimately,  "the 
aristocracy,  with  neither  chins  nor  foreheads,"  has 
one  more  strong,  healthy  addition  to  its  ranks  to 
be  thankful  for.  Technically,  The  Mind-the  Paint 
Girl  falls  far  short  of  its  author's  best  work.  It 
lacks  conciseness  as  well  as  freshness  of  character- 
ization; and  it  is  decidedly  deficient  in  that  econ- 
omy of  materials  and  that  unchecked  forward 
movement  which  have  usually  marked  Sir  Arthur's 
most  notable  efforts.  Without  excellent  acting  and 
the  fascination  inherent  in  all  depictions  of  life  on 
the  stage,  it  is  doubtful  whether  this  play  could  long 
survive.  It  seems  impossible,  even  for  an  artist 
of  Pinero's  calibre,  to  portray  Bohemia  without 

slipping  into  a  great  deal  of  sentimental  slush. 

121 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

Second  only  to  Sir  Arthur  Wing  Pinero  in  the 
latter-day  English  drama  is  Mr.  Henry  Arthur 
Jones.  In  Judah,  Mrs.  Dane's  Defense,  The  Hypo- 
crites, and  Michael  and  his  Lost  Angel,  to  mention 
only  a  few,  Mr.  Jones,  in  his  own  way,  attacks  cer- 
tain definite  problems  of  modern  life,  arising  out  of 
the  inadequacy  of  conventional  morality.  As  Mr. 
William  Dean  Howells  has  somewhere  pointed  out, 
all  these  plays  just  named  and  most  of  the  others 
by  the  same  writer  pay  unfaltering  tribute  to  moral 
law  and  the  inevitable  punishment  that  follows  its 
infraction.  In  The  Case  of  Rebellious  Susan,  how- 
ever, it  is  noted  that  this  supreme  issue  is  dodged 
to  make  possible  a  finale  for  comedy.  The  "  double 
standard"  is  here  being  exploited,  first  truthfully, 
in  frank  recognition  that  no  such  standard  has  a 
moral  right  to  prevail;  but  later,  falsely,  in  the 
easy  acceptance  of  social  usage  in  such  matters, 
without  perhaps  so  much  of  an  attempt  at  justi- 
fication as  we  find  in  As  a  Man  Thinks.  In  White- 
washing Julia,  on  the  other  hand,  we  have  the 
same  problem  amusingly  dealt  with  in  such  a  way 
that  the  heroine's  actual  guilt  or  innocence  is 
never  definitely  determined.    Her  lover,  far  from 

m 


THE      BRITISH 

immaculate    himself,    is    ultimately    "generous" 
enough  to  leave  her  past  as  a  closed  book. 

Like  Pinero,  Mr.  Jones  has  given  his  attention 
to  light  comedy  as  well  as  to  serious  drama.  His 
Joseph  Entangled  is  a  good  example  of  his  best 
work  in  the  former  category.  It  satirizes  the 
popular  love  of  placing  the  worst  interpretation 
upon  innocent  occurrences.  Typical  of  Mr.  Joneses 
serious  vein  is  The  Hypocrites,  a  play  built  up 
largely  of  familiar  figures  and  incidents  upon  the 
theme  of  expediency  in  human  conduct.  The  fact 
is  that,  in  conMnon  with  so  many  talented  play- 
wrights of  the  day,  this  author  is  a  frequent  con- 
ciliator of  that  theatricism which  demands  ''scenes" 
at  the  expense  of  ultimate  veracity  in  character 
portrayal.  For  example,  in  The  Galilean^s  Victory j 
though  the  problem  proposed  is  the  dramatically 
potent  one  of  the  bad  effect  of  an  unreligious  train- 
ing upon  a  young  society  girl,  still,  like  Pinero  in 
the  case  of  Mid-Channel,  the  playwright  goes  astray 
upon  the  old  familiar  triangle  and  balks  his  sub- 
ject. In  Michael  and  his  Lost  Angel,  to  the  end 
of  Act  II  we  have  a  series  of  situations  which 

effectively  emphasize  the  characters  and  advance 

123 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

a  logical  and  inevitable  story.  Here,  however,  the 
playwright  veers  off  into  the  melodrama  which  is 
his  continual  hindrance;  and,  as  a  result,  he  is  left 
with  nothing  for  a  last  act,  except  a  trivial  dispo- 
sition of  the  now  woodenized  characters  to  suit  the 
ancient  conventions.  Meanwhile,  the  real  tragedy 
of  the  fundamental  premises  is  abandoned  for  the 
much  less  valuable,  if  complicated,  building  up  to 
the  cathedral  scene.  The  situation  of  the  man  and 
the  woman  in  this  play  is  as  hopeless  as  that  of  the 
husband  and  the  wife  in  The  Second  Mrs.  Tan- 
queray.  In  terms  of  character,  there  is  a  real 
inherent  tragedy.  Character,  however,  is  ulti- 
mately sacrificed,  and  plot  is  given  the  right  of 
way  over  verisimilitude  and  logic. 

More  recently  Mr.  Jones  has  given  us  two  plays, 
Lydia  Gilmore  and  We  CanH  Be  as  Bad  as  All  That, 
which  betray  much  of  the  same  taint  as  that  which 
permeates  Michael  and  his  Lost  Angel.  Both  are 
made  up  of  familiar  elements.  In  We  CanH  Be  as 
Bad  as  All  That  may  be  noted  the  same  materials 
that  enter  into  Whitewashing  Julia.  There  are  the 
one  honest  man  facing  the  aggregation  of  Ldars, 

and  the  woman  with  a  past  defending  herself  in 
124 


THE      BRITISH 

the  manner  of  Lucy  Dane.  There  are,  moreover, 
the  stolen  necklace  and  the  substituted  jewels. 
Out  of  these  antiquated  threads  the  author  has 
woven  a  fairly  tight  melodramatic  plot,  with  a 
''big  scene"  for  a  climax  and  much  deft  and  amus- 
ing dialogue,  spiced  with  satire.  In  Lydia  Gil- 
more,  again,  there  is  relentless  cross-examination  of 
a  woman,  to  say  nothing  of  numerous  other  such 
familiar  incidents.  The  exposition,  too,  is  labored; 
while  the  device  of  the  sub-plot  is  ineffectual  in 
reheving  the  tension  of  the  main  story.  It  is 
significant  that  both  of  these  plays  achieved 
prompt  failure. 

The  fact  is  that  Mr.  Jones  has  not  well  learned 
the  lesson  enunciated  by  his  compatriot,  Mr.  John 
Galsworthy,  who,  admitting  the  necessity  for 
story  in  the  drama,  yet  insists  that  the  story  must 
come  from  the  characters,  and  not  vice  versa. 
Situations  are  essential,  but  people  must  not  be 
jammed  into  them  regardless.  Even  farce,  though 
built  often  on  fairly  insane  premises,  must  justify 
its  action  in  terms  of  character.  The  playwright 
who  depends  his  characters  from  his  plot,  instead 

of  his  plot  from  his  characters,  says  Mr.  Gals- 

125 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

worthy,  deserves  to  be  depended  himself.  A  good 
play  must  have  suspense  and  surprise  and  an 
unconventional  story,  but  none  of  these  must  ever 
be  permitted  to  interfere  with  absolute  truth  to 
life.  In  other  words,  the  dramatist  must  not  do 
what  Mr.  Jones  has  so  often  done,  and  that  is, 
veer  off  into  melodrama  and  so  discredit  primarily 
veracious  human  figures. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  far  easier  to  lay  down 
fhe  rule  than  to  follow  it.  The  amateur  dramatist, 
at  least,  if  not  always  the  professional,  is  apt  to 
find  in  high  comedy  a  perpetual  warfare  between 
plot  and  characterization,  that  is  indeed  dramatic 
in  itself.  The  problem  is  to  show  absolutely  real 
men  and  women  and  yet  to  show  them  in  a  story; 
for  story  is  essential  to  suspense  and  to  a  large 
part  of  the  desired  emotional  reaction.  On  the 
other  hand,  as  everyone  knows,  there  is  compara- 
tively little  story  in  real  life.  Most  story  for  the 
stage,  therefore,  has  to  be  invented;  it  should  be 
fresh,  and  it  must  be  made  to  grow  out  of  the 
characters.  If  in  this  exceedingly  delicate  process 
either  plot  or  characterization  gets  the  upper  hand, 

the  disproportionate  emphasis  is  sure  to  make  the 
126 


THE      BRITISH 

drama  suffer.  Indeed,  the  perfect  adjustment  of 
these  two  elements — in  high  comedy,  at  least — ^may 
be  compared  for  difficulty  to  Shylock's  task,the  cut- 
ting of  an  exact  pound  of  flesh,  no  less  and  no  more, 
and  all  without  the  shedding  of  a  drop  of  blood. 
Mr.  Galsworthy,  in  Justice^  tells  the  story  of  a 
clerk  in  an  English  law  office  who,  needing  money 
to  save  a  woman,  forges,  is  caught,  and  commits 
suicide.  The  purpose  is  to  propound  the  curious 
problem  wherein  a  man  should  actually  be  driven 
to  his  death  by  the  very  conditions  of  human 
justice.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  the  man's 
death  is  caused  not  by  justice,  but  by  the  fact  of 
the  woman  and  her  predicament.  As  in  the  case 
of  Paid  in  Fully  to  cite  one  of  many  similar  in- 
stances, the  original  thesis  is  not  permitted  to 
work  itself  out  unalloyed,  but  is  complicated  with 
another,  so  that  the  ultimate  tragedy  is  com- 
pounded of  two  distinct  elements.  Meanwhile,  the 
situation  has  been  attained.  Unfortunately,  how- 
ever, it  is  neither  strong  enough  nor  fresh  enough 
to  compensate  for  a  long  and  repetitive  second  act 
which  serves  little  purpose  other  than  to  hold  up 

the  action. 

127 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

Mr.  Galsworthy,  who  is  a  continuator  of  the 
Hardy  and  Meredith  school  of  literature,  naturally 
leans  to  pessimism.  In  The  Silver  Box  the  hope- 
less problem  arises  from  uncontrollable  environ- 
ment. In  Strife  the  struggle  of  two  obstinate  wiUs 
is  carried  on  without  even  the  sympathy  of  the 
natural  allies  and  in  the  face  of  the  demands  of 
practicality.  There  is  illustrated  merely  the  power 
of  pride  and  domination  to  usurp  the  place  of 
reason,  where  important  differences  demand 
prompt  settlement.  In  The  Pigeon  we  are  shown 
the  futility  of  charity  for  the  submerged  tenth. 
The  play  is  described  as  a  *' fantastic  comedy." 
In  reality,  it  is  a  commentary  on  life,  wherein 
splendidly  drawn  individuals  appear  in  relations 
and  episodes  entirely  justifiable  in  terms  of  the 
characters  themselves.  The  author  has  thus  far 
followed  his  own  precept.  He  has  not,  however, 
gone  farther  and  provided  the  unconventional  plot 
with  its  suspense,  surprise,  and  climax.  The 
Pigeon  is  full  of  happenings,  but  they  are  not 
ordered  in  the  manner  of  well  knit  dramatic  nar- 
rative. In  fact,  there  is  little  change  in  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  characters,  from  first  to  last. 
128 


THE      BRITISH 

Nevertheless,  the  play  is  a  sociological  document 
of  obvious  importance.  In  it  Vagabondia  is  not 
rehabilitated,  in  spite  of  all  the  earnest  efforts  of 
the  reformers;  instead,  Guinevere  Megan,  woman 
of  the  streets,  is  allowed  to  go  to  the  police  court 
to  learn  the  illogical,  not  to  say  cruel,  attitude  of 
society,  which,  wishing  her  dead,  yet  denies  her 
the  right  to  fulfil  that  wish.  No  solution  for  the 
problem  is  attempted.  Solutions  for  problems, 
indeed,  rarely  make  good  material  for  drama.  In- 
stead, the  author  regards  the  whole  matter  with 
judicial  impartiality  and  a  spirit  of  humane 
toleration. 

In  his  still  later  work,  The  Eldest  SoUy  Mr. 
Galsworthy  deals  with  an  English  squire  whose 
son,  having  betrayed  the  daughter  of  his  game- 
keeper, is  on  the  point  of  marrying  her  to  protect 
her.  In  a  similar  case  the  father  has  compelled 
one  of  his  laborers  to  marry  another  girl;  but 
when  the  situation  comes  home  to  him  the  squire 
begins  to  believe  that  respectability  must  be 
maintained  at  the  expense  of  morality.  When  the 
son  refuses  to  obey  his  father,  and  the  wife  is 

unwilling  to  intercede  with  the  girl,  the  squire  at- 
9  129 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

tempts  to  do  it  himself,  but  finds  the  task  beyond 
him.  Ultimately  the  girl  realizes  that  the  young 
man  no  longer  cares  for  her,  and  her  father  refuses 
to  permit  a  ^'charity  marriage "  in  his  family.  This 
not  altogether  novel  story  is  told,  as  usual  with  its 
author,  in  simple,  natural  dialogue,  and  with  admir- 
able economy  and  dignity.  The  play  lacks,  how- 
ever, both  in  high  indignation  and  in  fanciful  charm, 
characteristic  defects  that  have  marked  other  of 
Mr.  Galsworthy's  work.  Marriage  as  a  reparation 
is  a  typical  problem  for  latter-day  drama.  In  this 
play  it  is  at  least  handled  with  veracity  and  in  a 
tone  of  becoming,  if  pessimistic,  seriousness. 

Granting  the  truth  of  his  expressed  theory  of 
dramatic  composition,  we  are  bound  to  note  that 
Mr.  Galsworthy  has  more  than  once  failed  both 
in  his  logic  of  structure  and  in  his  choice  of  char- 
acters. There  is  much  that  is  vivid  and  true  in 
Strife,  for  example;  much  that  is  undoubtedly 
transcribed  from  real  life.  But  the  play  comprises 
actually  not  a  plot,  but  simply  one  situation. 
Moreover,  its  conclusion  fails  to  satisfy,  inasmuch 
as  its  lesson  of  compromise,  appropriate  enough 

to  this  one  specific  case,  is  insufficient  for  general 
130 


THE      BRITISH 

application.  With  larger  figures  to  people  his 
stage  and  a  more  rigid  logic  in  the  unfolding  of  his 
fable,  the  author  of  Strife  and  Justice  should  be 
capable  of  tragedy  worthy  of  high  rank. 

Of  course,  Mr.  Galsworthy  is  a  realist.  For- 
tunately, however,  his  self-styled  ''naturalism" 
never  descends  to  vulgarity  or  triviality.  In  fact, 
he  deals  always  with  vital  problems.  ''Matters 
change,  and  morals  change,"  he  asserts;  "but  men 
remain."  And  the  purpose  of  the  dramatist  should 
be  "to  set  men,  and  the  facts  about  them,  down 
faithfully,  so  that  they  draw  for  us  the  moral  of 
their  natural  actions."  Mr.  Galsworthy  very 
properly  denies  that  such  realism  as  he  advocates 
and  utilizes  is  merely  photographic.  Justice,  cer- 
tainly, is  selective,  compressed,  orderly,  emphatic, 
in  spite  of  the  sheer  tragic  horror  of  its  grim  court- 
room and  prison  scenes.  The  very  torture  of 
solitary  confinement  is  set  before  us.  Dramatic 
technique,  however,  has  been  neglected  to  an 
extent  that  proved  fatal,  so  far  as  the  play's  stage 
career  is  concerned.  It  is  encouraging  that  this 
writer's  endeavor  is  toward  the  fusion  of  natural- 
ism with  the  highest  skill  in  dramatic  arrangement. 

131 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

"It  is  desperately  hard,"  he  declares,  *'to  produce 
perfectly  natural  conversation  and  movements, 
when  each  natural  phrase  spoken  and  each  natural 
movement  made  has  not  only  to  contribute  toward 
the  growth  and  perfection  of  a  drama's  soul,  but 
also  to  be  a  revelation,  phrase  by  phrase,  move- 
ment by  movement,  of  essential  traits  of  charac- 
ter." Mr.  Galsworthy,  indeed,  foresees  not  only  a 
"broad  and  clear-cut  channel"  of  English  dramatic 
naturalism,  but  also  "a  poetic  prose  drama,  emo- 
tionalizing us  by  its  diversity  and  purity  of  form 
and  invention,  and  whose  province  will  be  to 
disclose  the  elemental  soul  of  man  and  the  forces 
of  Nature — ^not,  perhaps,  as  the  old  tragedies  dis- 
closed them,  not  necessarily  in  the  epic  mood,  but 
always  with  beduty  and  the  spirit  of  discovery." 

To  the  former  of  these  two  predicted  move- 
ments, apparently,  belongs  that  most  picturesque 
figure  among  the  playwrights  of  to-day,  Mr. 
George  Bernard  Shaw,  socialist,  satirist,  critic, 
anti-vivisectionist,  vegetarian,  and  general  poseur. 
In  any  serious  consideration  of  this  writer's  plays 
it  becomes  necessary,  in  the  first  place,  to  inquire 

whether  he  is  reaUy  a  significant  figure  in  the 
132 


THE      BRITISH 

evolution  of  the  drama  or  merely  an  amusing 
excrescence  upon  that  main  growth.  At  least, 
Mr.  Shaw  is  different.  His  fundamental  claim  to 
our  attention,  indeed,  rests  invariably  upon  the 
element  of  novelty.  Now,  novelty  may  mean 
progress,  or  it  may  be  nothing  more  than  mere 
clever  side-stepping.  What  does  it  mean  in  the 
case  of  Mr.  Shaw?  To  answer  this  question  with 
finality,  one  would  have  to  have  definite  knowledge 
as  to  the  exact  trend  of  the  modem  drama.  Such 
prescience  the  present  writer  makes  no  claim  to 
possess. 

In  order  to  divert  the  main  course  of  dramatic 
writing,  judging  by  Mr.  Shaw,  one  has  but  to 
inject  into  an  art  generally  supposed  to  be  bound 
up  with  emotion  an  abrupt  dose  of  paradoxical 
thought.  Humanitarianism,  ultra-realism,  satire, 
and  ideas  are  the  chief  ingredients  of  the  modem 
thesis  drama,  to  which  he  is  a  regular  contributor. 
Your  true  reformer  is,  of  course,  always  iconoclas- 
tic; and,  like  Ibsen,  Gorki,  and  Brieux,  Mr.  Shaw 
is  assiduous  in  the  shattering  of  idolatrous  tradi- 
tion.   He  comes  into  the  theatre  of  to-day,  with 

all  its  venerable  inherited  canons  and  its  authori- 

133 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

tative  restraints,  like  a  new  Jean-Jacques  ill  at 
ease  in  the  classic  atmosphere  of  the  eighteenth 
century  drawing-room  and — perhaps  therefore — 
eminently  antagonistic  to  it.  It  seems  nearly  un- 
pardonable thus  to  compare  Mr.  Shaw  with  the 
father  of  that  romanticism  he  so  valiantly  and  so 
unremittingly  assails.  But  Rousseau  was  no  more 
impatient  of  the  rules  and  restraints  imposed  upon 
him  by  pseudo-classicism  than  is  the  author  of 
Man  and  Superman  with  the  traditional  restrictions 
of  the  twentieth  century  theatre.  To  Shaw  the 
art  of  the  drama,  indeed,  like  any  other  art,  is  a 
preposterous  institution,  if  it  may  not  always  be 
made  subservient  to  the  transportation  of  un- 
limited moral  freightage.  "Uart  pour  VarV^  to 
him  can  be  no  better  than  a  cabalistic  incantation 
to  evoke  the  odor  of  brimstone.  He  is  said  to  have 
discovered  'Hhe  hackneyed  but  ever-alarming  and 
heretical  truth,  that  life  is  greater  than  art."  Of 
course,  many  men  before  him  have  made  the  same 
discovery  and  proceeded  forthwith  to  discard  art 
altogether.  As  for  George  Bernard  Shaw,  Mr. 
A.  B.  Walkeley,  for  one,  feels  confident  that  he 

provides  us  with  "a  series  of  delicate  and  moving 
134 


THE      BRITISH. 

sensations,  which  the  spectacle  simply  of  technical 
address,  of  theatrical  talent,  can  never  inspire." 

However  that  may  be,  Mr.  Shaw  apparently 
reacts  from  the  technique  of  the  theatre  with 
malice  aforethought  to  a  species  of  entertainment 
composed  chiefly  of  intellectual  attacks  on  false 
ideals  and  shams,  and  classified  as  plays  often 
only  by  virtue  of  the  definition  which  makes  "a 
play"  mean  any  performance  given  upon  a  stage. 
A  mere  dialogue,  without  suspense,  surprise, 
climax,  or  marked  emotional  appeal  of  any  sort, 
is  suflScient,  providing  it  enunciates  the  author's 
views  with  regard  to  latter-day  manners  and 
morals.  This  is,  obviously,  the  stage  usurping  the 
function  of  the  pulpit.  If  all  art  did  the  same,  we 
should  have  only  preaching. 

In  a  sense,  George  Bernard  Shaw  is  the  modem 
Don  Quixote  who  has  devoted  himself  to  the 
destruction  of  the  giants  of  false  and  flattering 
illusion.  He  tilts  at  everything  that  seems  pre- 
tentious, whether  it  be  an  historic  demigod  or  a 
smug  conventionality  of  the  day.  As  a  result,  it 
often  happens  that  the  only  essential  conflict  that 

enters  into  his  *' plays"  is  the  conflict  waged  by 

135 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

the  author  against  his  mighty,  if  often  unsubstan- 
tial, opponents.  Moreover,  for  every  modern 
social  falsehood  that  he  actually  uncovers,  he 
merely  cries  *'Wolf!"  some  scores  of  times.  To 
analyze  his  philosophy,  or  to  undertake  a  serious 
criticism  of  it,  is  beyond  the  province  of  a  discus- 
sion limited  primarily  to  the  dramatist.  He 
chooses  to  replace — or  to  attempt  to  replace — the 
Christian  doctrine  of  self-abnegation  with  the 
Nietzschean  theory  of  self-exaltation.  It  were 
folly  to  deny  that,  in  this  respect,  Mr.  Shaw 
practises  what  he  preaches.  Romanticism  he 
assumes  to  abhor,  though  himself  exhibiting,  like 
most  other  violent  antagonists  of  that  movement, 
numerous  highly  romantic  traits.  Chief  among 
these  characteristics  is  his  perpetual  emphasis 
upon  the  exceptional.  Indeed,  the  breath  and 
finer  spirit  of  his  endeavors  will  be  found,  upon 
analysis,  to  consist  primarily  of  the  mere  negation 
of  the  commonly  accepted.  Different  as  may  be 
their  views  upon,  say,  the  divorce  question,  Mr. 
Shaw  resembles  Mr.  Gilbert  K.  Chesterton  in  more 
ways  than  one,  but  chiefly  in  respect  of  his  fondness 

for  the  paradox.    This  is,  of  course,  of  romanticism 
136 


THE      BRITISH 

most  romantic.  When  we  add  the  extraordinary- 
capacity  of  this  writer  for  self-puffery  and  self- 
mockery — in  fine,  for  emphasis  upon  the  ego  and 
for  romantic  irony — ^we  must  realize  that  in  him 
we  have  distinctly  a  specimen  of  that  tribe  whose 
very  name  is  abhorrent  to  Mr.  Shaw. 

At  all  events,  as  a  playwright,  like  his  very 
different  fellow-workers,  Pinero,  Jones,  and  Gals- 
worthy, Shaw  is  chiefly  interested  in  problem 
plays.  "What  people  call  vice  is  eternal,"  he 
declares;  "what  they  call  virtue  is  mere  fashion." 
Whether  this  be  true  or  not,  whether  vice  itself 
is  not  sometimes  real  virtue  in  disguise,  just  as 
virtue  is  so  often  only  masked  vice,  Mr.  Shaw  is 
never  so  happy  as  when  he  is  proposing  some 
question  of  the  hollowness  of  conventional  moral- 
ity. Respectability  has  always  been,  and  will 
always  be,  fair  game  for  the  social  satirist;  and 
here  is  one  more  such  critic  who  perfectly  agrees 
with  Huxley  that  "the  customary  fate  of  new 
truths  is  to  begin  as  heresies  and  to  end  as  super- 
stitions." Off  with  the  old,  then,  and  on  with  the 
new!  And  yet — to  make  haste  slowly!  To  be  not 
the  first  by  whom  the  new  is  tried,  at  least  not 

137 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

always;  nor  yet  the  last  to  relinquish  the  old. 
"The  golden  rule  is  that  there  are  no  golden  rules/* 
remarks  Mr.  Shaw  with  customary  sententiousness; 
and  so  leaves  us  ready  for  anarchy — ^unless,  indeed, 
he  himself  might  be  induced  to  provide  some 
temporary  substitute  for  the  immemorial  standards 
of  conduct.  In  fact,  he  admits,  somewhat  regret- 
fully, that  ''there  will  for  many  centuries  to  come 
be  a  huge  demand  for  a  ready-made  code  of  con- 
duct for  general  use,  which  will  be  used  more  or 
less  as  a  matter  of  overwhelming  convenience  by 
all  members  of  communities."  Meanwhile,  he  is 
utilizing  the  stage  as  a  propaganda  for  his  extreme 
romantic  individualism.  Making  a  point  of  dis- 
carding all  possible  traditions  of  the  dramatic  art, 
he  makes  it  also  a  point  to  disregard  all  sorts  of 
reverence;  and,  for  this  reason,  if  for  no  other,  as 
a  playwright,  falls  always  into  mere  farcical  satire. 
Mr.  Shaw's  excessive  fondness  for  the  irreverent 
is  typical  of  the  "shocking"  pose  he  continually 
maintains.  To  those  who  take  him  at  his  word 
and  so  refuse  to  regard  him  seriously,  particularly 
in  his  moments  of  irreligion,  this  is  perhaps  all 

one.   To  others,  however,  this  sort  of  attitudinizing 
138 


THE      BRITISH 

is  intolerable.  On  one  occasion,  it  is  reported,  Mr. 
Shaw  aroused,  by  his  irreverence,  the  anger  of 
Tolstoy.  In  thanking  the  author  for  a  copy  of 
Man  and  Superman,  the  Russian  novelist  remarked, 
"One  should  not  joke  about  such  subjects  as  the 
destiny  of  human  life  and  the  causes  of  the  de- 
pravity and  vice  which  fill  the  life  of  our  times.'' 
When  he  sent  Tolstoy  a  copy  of  The  Shewing  Up 
of  Blanco  Posnet,  Mr.  Shaw  wrote,  ''You  said  that 
in  my  other  book  my  style  was  not  sufficiently 
serious,  and  that  I  made  people  laugh  at  the  most 
solenm  moments.  But  why  should  I  not  do  this? 
Why  should  laughter  and  humor  be  taboo?  Sup- 
pose the  world  merely  one  of  God's  jokes,  would 
you  have  worked  less  to  make  a  bad  joke  into  a 
good  one?"  To  this  Tolstoy  curtly  replied,  "To 
Bernard  Shaw:  As  regards  your  reflections  on 
good  and  evil,  I  can  only  repeat  what  I  have  said 
about  your  Man  and  Superman,  namely,  that  ques- 
tions of  God  and  of  good  and  evil  are  too  important 
to  be  spoken  of  in  a  light  tone.  It  is  for  this 
reason  that — as  I  will  tell  you  frankly — the  final 
words  of  your  letter  produced  a  very  painful 

impression  on  me." 

139 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

There  is  decided  kinship  between  Bernard 
Shaw  and  Henry  Fielding,  so  far  as  play-writing 
is  concerned:  in  his  earlier  period  the  author  of 
Tom  Jones  was  given  to  writing  a  rather  non- 
dramatic  type  of  satirical  farces  that  are  the  direct 
ancestors  of  Candida  and  You  Never  Can  Tell  and 
Fanny^s  First  Play.  The  last-named  entertain- 
ment, indeed,  takes  chiefly  from  Fielding — ^whom 
Mr.  Shaw,  by  the  way,  regards  as  the  greatest  of 
dramatists  from  Shakespeare  to  Ibsen — the  idea  of 
the  induction  and  the  epilogue,  wherein  the  critics 
of  the  day  pass  judgment  upon  the  piece.  This, 
perhaps  the  most  successful  of  its  author's  at- 
tempts, at  least  from  the  box-oJSice  standpoint, 
comprises,  in  addition  to  its  sardonic  forestalling 
of  journalistic  criticism,  a  highly  amusing  com- 
mentary on  middle-class  respectability  and  its 
incapacity  to  cope  with  the  emergencies  of  the  un- 
conventional. The  drawing  power  of  this  strange 
intermingling  of  satire,  paradox,  fantasy,  and 
farce  lies,  however,  in  its  impudence,  its  wit,  and 
chiefly  its  novelty,  rather  than  in  its  inherent  value 
as  a  revelator  of  false  standards.    Mr.  Shaw  has 

frankly  described  himself  as  a  mountebank,  blow- 
140 


THE      BRITISH 

ing  his  mercenary  trumpet  at  the  cart's  tail.  And, 
as  a  highly  amusing  charlatan,  in  fact,  he  succeeds 
rather  better,  in  his  plays  at  least,  than  as  a  really 
profound  commentator  on  human  life. 

Of  the  plays  which  attempt  a  more  serious 
exposition  of  the  Shavian  philosophy,  perhaps  Man 
and  Superman  is  the  most  noteworthy.  A  dialogue, 
divided  for  convenience  into  acts,  it  presents  no 
further  dramatic  struggle  than  the  conflict  of  the 
characters'  ideas,  a  conflict  which  necessarily 
eventuates  in  nothing.  In  Candida  we  have  the 
equally  exciting  spectacle  of  the  combat  of  ''the 
higher,  but  vaguer,  timider  vision,  and  the  inco- 
herent, mischievous,  and  even  ridiculous  unprac- 
ticalness'*  of  the  poet  Marchbanks  as  ''a  dramatic 
antagonist  for  the  clear,  bold,  sure,  sensible, 
benevolent,  salutarily  short-sighted  Christian  So- 
cialist idealism"  of  Morell.  If  all  this  antagonism 
had  been  expressed  in  some  form  of  objective 
action,  rather  than  merely  in  a  flood  of  discussion 
and  words,  the  success  of  Candida  as  a  play  might 
have  been  expected. 

As  an  amusing  agitator  of  twentieth-century 

thought  and  as  a  brilliant  advocate  of  the  Socialism 

141 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

which  is  at  the  root  of  all  his  notions,  Bernard 
Shaw  is  a  force  worth  considering.  As  a  contribu- 
tor to  the  actable  material  of  the  English  stage, 
however,  his  importance  is  dubious.  Whatever 
success  he  attains  in  this  field  will  probably  spring 
from  his  gifts  in  satirical  dialogue,  coupled  with  a 
less  anarchistic  attitude  in  the  construction  of 
farcical  situations  for  the  stage. 

To  speak  of  Shaw  is  inevitably  to  recall  that 
younger  exponent  of  the  ''revolutionary  drama," 
Mr.  Granville  Barker.  To  Mr.  Barker,  ''a  play  is 
anything  that  can  be  made  effective  upon  the 
stage  of  a  theatre  by  human  agency.  And  I  am 
not  sure,"  he  adds,  ''that  this  definition  is  not  too 
narrow."  As  a  result  of  this  view,  at  all  events, 
in  Mr.  Barker's  works  for  the  stage  we  have  a 
series  of  productions  marked  at  the  same  time  by 
their  conscientious  effort  to  illustrate  the  latitude 
of  this  definition  and  by  the  freshness  and  original- 
ity of  dramatic  talent  which  struggles  ineffectually 
under  the  load  of  non-dramatic  impedimenta.  In 
his  attempt  to  make  the  drama  approximate  life, 
Mr.  Barker  finds  nothing  too  commonplace,  too 

dreary,  nor  too  impertinent  to  be  included  in  the 
U2 


THE      BRITISH 

conversation  of  his  characters.  Through  long 
pages  of  perhaps  characteristic,  but  utteriy  unim- 
portant, talk  struggles  a  thin  thread  of  narrative, 
scarcely  strong  enough  to  hold  the  piece  even 
loosely  together.  All  this  is  deplorable;  for  nothing 
worth  while  is  accomplished — the  stage  is  brought 
no  nearer  to  reahty,  and  a  vital  illuminant — 
if  the  metaphor  may  be  so  manipulated — is 
almost  cunningly  concealed,  like  Gratiano's  rea- 
sons, in  a  bushel  of  chaff.  It  is  not  the  art  that  is 
true  to  life,  but  rather  the  life  that  is  in  no  wise 
true  to  art.  The  Madras  House,  for  example,  a 
play  without  hero,  heroine,  or  plot,  sets  forth,  in 
the  familiar  atmosphere  of  middle-class  English 
life,  the  varying  English  views  upon  the  woman 
question.  In  The  Voysey  Inheritance  we  are  faced 
with  the  problem  of  financial  responsibility  handed 
down  from  father  to  son.  In  the  searchingly 
pathetic  drama,  Waste,  the  proposition  is  that  of 
the  havoc  wrought  in  human  life  through  impulsive 
violation  of  civihzation's  moral  code.  In  all  three, 
as  in  other  of  Mr.  Barker's  plays,  however,  the 
true  dramatic  significance  is  quite  buried  beneath 

the  heap  of  photographically  realistic   rubbish. 

143 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

These  excesses  of  the  author,  committed  doubtless 
with  a  view  to  originahty,  only  succeed  in  thwart- 
ing their  own  purpose. 

In  Mr.  Barker's  and  Mr.  Galsworthy's  train 
follow  a  noteworthy  band  of  devoted  "naturalists," 
including  Elizabeth  Baker,  Githa  Sowerby,  Stanley 
Houghton,  John  Masefield,  and  others.  Several 
years  ago  Miss  Baker,  then  an  unknown  typist  in 
the  office  of  the  London  Spectator,  produced  her 
study  in  monotony,  known  as  Chains.  This  piece, 
which  contains  excellent  characterization  and  life- 
like dialogue,  is  necessarily  deficient  in  action.  It 
is  given  over  to  an  exposition  of  that  same  dull 
routine  of  a  London  clerk's  humdrum  life  which 
Charles  Lamb  so  keenly  resented  more  than  a 
century  ago.  There  is  a  struggle  in  the  play,  when 
one  fellow  at  least  makes  up  his  mind  to  break 
away  from  the  grim  clutches  of  the  commonplace. 
His  resolution  vanishes,  however,  at  the  announce- 
ment of  his  wife's  prospective  maternity,  and  he 
settles  back  helplessly  into  his  chains.  The  play 
fails  of  real  tragic  dignity  largely  because  of  the 
patent  fact  that  the  shackles  of  monotony  are,  after 

aU,  rather  cheerfully  worn  by  the  mass  of  mankind. 
144 


THE      BRITISH 

In  Rutherford  and  Son^  Miss  Githa  Sowerby, 
whose  youth  is  mentioned  with  surprise  by  most 
critics,  sets  before  us  with  notable  vitaUty  and 
force  the  ruthlessly  dominant  male.  Like  Chains, 
this  play  is  gloomy,  sordid,  and  depressing,  admir- 
able in  characterization  and  dialogue,  and  almost 
devoid  of  action.  Its  popularity,  in  the  face  of 
its  hard  and  repellent  subject-matter,  surely  adds 
point  to  Moli^re's  reflection  that  the  business  of 
amusing  honest  folk  is  a  strange  one. 

Much  the  same  thing  might  be  said  with  regard 

to  Mr.  Stanley  Houghton's  Hindle  Wakes,  another 

character  study  pure  and  simple,  wherein  some 

imattractive   English   country  types  react  with 

appropriate  variation  from  an  incident — the  only 

one  of  the  play — ^which  has  occurred  before  Act  I 

begins.    The  heroine,  an  advanced  young  person, 

makes  her  declaration  of  independence,  so  far  as 

certain  ancient  prejudices  and  conventions  are 

concerned,  and,  hke  the  girl  in  The  Eldest  Son  of 

Mr.  Galsworthy,  or  that  other  in  Mr.  Ervine's 

The  Magnanimous  Lover,   refuses  the  reluctant 

"reparation"  of  marriage.     She  adds  decisively, 

"So  long  as  IVe  to  live  my  own  life,  I  don't  see 
10  145 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

why  I  shouldn't  choose  what  it's  to  be."  The 
central  figure,  old  Nathaniel  Jeffcote,  is  crabbed 
and  cantankerous,  coarse  and  autocratic,  but  far 
more  human  than  the  implacable  tyrant  of  Miss 
Sowerby's  drama. 

As  for  Mr.  John  Masefield's  Nan,  it  is  simply 
one  more  exploitation  of  the  cheerless  and  the 
charmless,  wherein  the  spectre  of  pessimism  stalks 
rampant  and  proclaims  itseK  reality.  Mr.  Mase- 
field  is  a  poet,  but  only  in  the  last  act  of  his  play 
does  he  wax  poetic,  and  then,  be  it  admitted,  he 
almost  attains  high  tragedy,  as  the  mercenary 
lover  is  paid  in  full  for  trifling  with  the  heart  of 
Nan.  Thomas  Hardy  might  have  lent  significance 
to  this  dismal  tale. 

But  the  reaction  from  this  kind  of  thing  is  as 
inevitable  as  the  reaction  from  any  other  extreme. 
The  realistic  movement  has  ebbed  and  flowed  and 
done  its  work  before,  and  it  will  ebb  again.  Doubt- 
less it  is  proper  to  show  one's  resentment  against 
an  over-artificial  theatre  by  discarding  every 
dramatic  device  and  by  slicing  life  down  to  the 
bone.  But  there  is  such  a  thing,  to  vary  the  meta- 
phor, as  throwing  out  too  much  ballast  and  so 
146 


THE      BRITISH 

being  swept  away.  What  stage  *' cubism"  or 
''futurism"  may  yet  do  to  us  is  dreadful  to  reflect 
upon.  Why  not  dramas  that,  while  realistic,  deal 
with  at  least  ordinarily  sympathetic  people  taking 
part  in  representative  and  interesting  events? 
Why  not  unconventionality  without  dreary  deso- 
lation? Why  not  the  principle  of  selection,  even 
in  naturahsm?  Without  the  active  operation  of 
this  principle,  without  a  considerable  reliance  upon 
the  skill  of  the  technician,  without  story  and  com- 
pleteness, as  well  as  mere  continuity,  the  realistic 
drama  will  inevitably  have  to  make  way  for  the 
idealistic  or  the  romantic,  even  though  the  latter 
overwhelm  us  with  all  its  own  peculiar  excesses. 
Mere  samples  of  the  fabric  of  life  will  never  satis- 
factorily substitute  for  reproductions  of  its  pattern. 
Even  so  brief  a  consideration  of  the  modem 
EngHsh  drama  as  the  present  hasty  summary  must 
contain  at  least  a  reference  to  the  promising  work 
of  such  writers  as  Rudolf  Besier,  Louis  Napoleon 
Parker,  Charles  Rann  Kennedy,  Alfred  Sutro, 
Cosmo  Hamilton,  Arnold  Bennett,  Graham  Moffat, 
and  Macdonald  Hastings. 

Mr.  Besier  is  best  known  for  his  two  dehghtful 

147 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

comedies  of  manners,  Don  and  Lady  Patricia.  The 
former  is  a  well  built  play,  in  which  clearly  drawn 
characters  advance,  through  clever  dialogue,  a 
story  calculated  to  make  a  distinct  sympathetic 
appeal.  A  trace  of  melodrama  slightly  taints, 
though  it  by  no  means  spoils,  this  comedy,  which 
for  the  most  part  exhibits  that  favorite  English 
middle-class  respectability  in  conflict  with  the 
unconventional.  The  satire  is  light,  but  sure. 
Such  a  play  shines  with  more  than  natural  bril- 
liance in  contrast  with  the  perversities  of  Messrs. 
Shaw  and  Barker.  Either  of  these  writers,  by 
simply  bowing  good-humoredly  to  the  indispens- 
able traditions  of  the  playwright's  craft,  might  pro- 
duce plays  almost  as  interesting  and  effective  as 
Mr.  Besier's  Don. 

In  Lady  Patricia  the  satire  is  directed  against 
sentimentalism,  and  the  comedy  has  a  tendency, 
perhaps,  to  become  over-subtle.  Besides,  in  con- 
structing an  almost  obtrusively  symmetrical  plot, 
the  author  has  here  thrust  into  it  a  number  of 
rather  colorless  figures.  The  spirit  of  the  comedy, 
however,  is  altogether  appealing  in  its  delicacy. 

Even  more  purely  atmospheric  is  the  quaint  and 
148 


THE      BRITISH 

charming  comedy,  Pomander  Walkj  by  Mr.  Louis 
Napoleon  Parker.  Setting  and  characterization, 
rather  than  plot,  make  this  play,  which  is  a  sort 
of  dramatized  essay  of  Eha,  delightfully  blending 
humor  and  sentiment  in  polished  dialogue.  There 
was  much  of  this  charm  in  the  author's  earUer 
Rosemary  J  and  it  also  marks  his  later  Disraeli  and 
The  Paper  Chase.  The  nature  of  the  plot  in  Dis- 
raeli, however,  requires  the  great  Beaconsfield  to 
be  an  amazingly  weak  and  simple  puppet  moved 
only  by  theatrical  exigency. 

As  a  master  of  pageantry,  Mr.  Parker  naturally 
inclines  to  the  spectacular.  Designed  as  a  patriotic 
stimulus,  his  Drake  presents  a  gallery  of  historical 
jBgures  moulded  largely  into  English  types.  The 
great  conmiander  himself  succeeds  always  by  vir- 
tue of  his  ultra-British  traits.  Hearty,  fearless, 
good-natured,  stem,  yet  democratic,  he  is  like 
another  Henry  V.  When,  with  Roman  justice,  he 
tries  and  condemns  his  friend  of  old,  he  yet  accepts 
in  full  the  traitor's  self-purgation  and  parts  with 
him  in  heroic  tenderness.  In  this  incident,  at  least, 
Drake  rises  from  the  merely  spectacular  to  the  truly 

dramatic.     As  for  the  author's  still  more  recent 

149 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

"pageant  play,"  Joseph  and  his  Brethren,  in  spite 
of  its  obvious  dependence  upon  the  scenic,  it,  too, 
approximates  real  drama  in  several  instances. 

Relying  with  similar  stress  upon  setting,  atmos- 
phere, and  characterization  for  their  charm  are 
Mr.  Graham  Moffat's  Bunty  Pulls  the  Strings  and 
A  Scrape  o'  the  Pen,  plays  that  have — especially 
the  latter — even  less  plot,  though  not  more  charm, 
than  Messrs.  Arnold  Bennett's  and  Edward  Kno- 
blauch's curious  modern  chronicle  play.  Milestones. 
These  pieces,  like  most  of  Mr.  Shaw's  and  Mr. 
Barker's,  seem  almost  to  belie  the  Aristotelian 
dictum  with  regard  to  the  indispensability  of  action 
in  drama.  As  for  Milestones,  it  is  played  in  the 
same  room,  pictured  variously  as  in  1860, 1885,  and 
1912.  Obviously,  a  continuous  dramatic  narrative 
is  out  of  the  question,  since  the  long  intervals  have 
to  be  accounted  for  through  the  greater  part  of 
both  Act  II  and  Act  III.  The  performance  relies 
chiefly  upon  its  novelty,  in  part  upon  its  charac- 
terization, for  its  appeal.  Somehow  one  feels  that 
the  story  might  have  been  much  more  effective  had 
it  centred  around  some  more  vital  and  interesting 

problem  than  that  of  wooden  versus  iron  ships. 
150 


THE      BRITISH 

Mr.  Bennett's  What  the  Pvblic  Wants  is  an 
amusing  satire  in  dialogue,  with  very  little  plot. 
It  has  lately  been  introduced  to  American  audi- 
ences by  Miss  Horniman's  Manchester  company 
of  repertory  players.  Recently,  too,  Mr.  Granville 
Barker  has  produced  in  London  Mr.  Bennett's 
farcical  tour  de  force,  The  Great  Adventure.  In  it 
an  impossible  artist  exchanges  identities  with  his 
dying  valet,  who  is  accordingly  buried  with  full 
ceremony  in  Westminster  Abbey.  Complications 
ensue  when  an  expert  discovers  the  deception  and 
when,  after  the  artist's  marriage,  an  unsuspected 
former  wife  of  the  dead  valet  appears;  but  the 
secret  is  carefully  guarded  so  that  Westminster 
may  not  suffer  ridicule,  and  the  painter  continues, 
in  all  senses,  to  rest  in  peace.  Obviously  this  is  a 
hero  who  acts  merely  as  the  strings  are  pulled. 
The  creator  of  such  real  men  and  women  as  those 
that  people  Mr.  Bennett's  dehghtful  city  in  the 
Potteries  should  have  no  dealings  with  common- 
place puppets  like  Ham  Carve. 

Another  notable  writer  of  comedy  of  manners 

is  Mr.  Alfred  Sutro,  whose  Walls  of  Jericho  is  yet 

remembered  for  its  convincing  figures,  its  engag- 

151 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

ingly  natural  dialogue,  and  its  interesting  story. 
Indeed,  this  play  far  outshines  a  certain  latter-day 
echo  of  it  by  a  younger  British  playwright.  In 
The  Fascinating  Mr.  Vandervelt  the  author  amus- 
ingly sets  forth  the  fact  that  clever  wicked  people 
are  often  preferable  to  righteous  bores.  Later 
plays  from  the  same  pen,  however,  have  not  always 
been  marked  by  an  equal  sincerity.  The  Builder 
of  Bridges,  though  smartly  written  and  containing 
more  than  one  clever  character  sketch,  yet  smacks 
of  artificiality  as  to  sentiment,  and  so  is  devoid  of 
permanent  significance.  In  The  Fire  Screen,  again, 
we  have  the  material  of  the  theatre  almost  exclu- 
sively. The  incidents  are  dexterously  presented, 
but  we  know  quite  well  that  they  are  not  from 
real  life.  The  characters,  too,  are  old  friends, 
from  the  stage  adventuress,  Angela,  to  the  stage 
Don  Juan,  Oliver.  If  there  were  such  people  in 
actuahty,  doubtless  they  would  become  involved 
in  just  such  situations  as  Mr.  Sutro  contrives.  In 
The  Perplexed  Husband  he  has  handled  the  woman's 
rights  question  entertainingly  without  becoming 
seriously  involved  in  it.    As  in  several  other  recent 

plays,  the  baleful  influence  of  Ibsen  on  modem 
152 


THE      BRITISH 

woman  furnishes  the  complication.  The  matter 
is  slight,  scarcely  sufficient  to  furnish  forth  more 
than  three  acts;  but  the  writer's  skill  is  apparent 
in  the  manner  in  which,  in  spite  of  this  fact,  he 
has  maintained  real  suspense.  Indeed,  Mr.  Sutro 
himself  gives  us  his  views  as  to  the  cardinal  rule 
for  playwriting  in  the  words:  "Never  be  dull." 

To  return  to  the  realm  of  the  problem  play,  it 
is  a  pleasure  to  note,  in  closing,  the  work  of  Charles 
Rann  Kennedy,  of  Cosmo  Hamilton,  and  of  B. 
Macdonald  Hastings.  Mr.  Kennedy's  The  Servant 
in  the  House  is  a  serious  and  significant  handling 
of  a  delicate  theme — the  introduction  of  the  Christ 
figure  upon  the  stage.  Described  as  a  ''modem 
morality  play,"  it  has  some  of  the  deficiencies  of 
its  prototype,  if  not  all  of  its  good  qualities.  The 
dialogue  is  ''literary"  and  diffuse;  the  characters 
are,  to  a  large  extent,  the  personifications  of  virtues 
or  vices;  and  the  plot,  though  compact  and  sym- 
metrical, is  attenuated.  In  The  Terrible  Meek,  Mr. 
Kennedy  has  yielded  completely  to  his  impulse  to 
preach  a  sermon  and  offered  us  a  strange  concoction 
of  tasteless,  if  well-meant,  theatricism.    Mr.  Cosmo 

Hamilton,  in  The  Blindness  of  Virtue,  has  attacked 

153 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

what  has  been  quite  otherwise  dealt  with  by  Wede- 
kind  in  Friihlings  Erwachen,  namely,  the  problem 
of  the  enlightenment  of  the  young  upon  the  subject 
of  sex.  In  spite  of  so  solemn  a  theme,  the  writer 
has  managed  to  produce  an  interesting  picture  of 
English  country  home  life,  peopled  with  several 
convincing  Jane  Austen  types.  The  whole  atmos- 
phere of  the  play,  too,  is  one  of  wholesome  and 
genial  S3Tnpathy,  unmarred  by  cynicism  or  bitter- 
ness. In  Mr.  B.  Macdonald  Hastings  we  have  a 
still  more  recent  addition  to  the  gallery  of  notable 
and  promising  British  playwrights.  His  interesting 
drama.  The  New  Sin,  though  it  failed  of  large 
popularity  in  America,  was  generously  acclaimed 
in  London.  Having  but  seven  characters,  all  male, 
and  no  ''love  interest,"  it  has  made  its  appeal 
strictly  by  means  of  a  powerful  handling  of  a 
hitherto  unexploited  theme.  The  new  "sin"  is 
that  of  living  when  your  death  would  benefit 
others.  Perhaps,  however,  the  American  non- 
success  of  the  drama  was  due  in  large  part  to  the 
unusualness,  not  to  say  the  unreality,  of  the  central 
situation.    At  all  events,  the  subject  was  given  a 

distinctly  fresh  treatment,  rarely  at  all  stagey. 
154 


THE      BRITISH 

Similarly  novel  and  engaging  is  the  handling  of 
another  unusual  theme  employed  by  Mr.  Haddon 
Chambers  in  his  quaintly  humorous  and  pathetic 
play,  Passers-by.  In  the  Beatrice  Dainton  of 
this  piece,  too,  we  find  a  r61e  of  actual  heroic 
martyrdom. 

There  are  two  other  English  playwrights  of 
to-day  who  distinctly  require  a  treatment  separate 
from  that  of  most  of  their  contemporaries;  these 
are  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips  and  Mr.  James  M.  Barrie. 
Mr.  Phillips  stands  alone  as  the  author  of  several 
successful  dramas  in  blank  verse,  all  of  marked 
poetic  value.  Mr.  Barrie  has  presented  us  with 
a  number  of  idyllic  and  captivating  prose  plays  of 
the  most  delicate  fancy,  satire,  and  humor. 

With  Paolo  and  Francesca,  Mr.  Phillips  first 

established  himself  as  a  poet  of  the  stage.    This 

four-act  tragedy  is  ordered  with  what  so  eminent 

a  critic  as  Mr.  William  Archer  terms  the  skill  of  a 

Sardou  and  the  lovely  poetry  of  a  Tennyson.    This 

is,  indeed,  high  praise.     Herod  is  a  tragedy  of 

much  power  and  dignity,  swift  of  action  and  broad 

of  theatrical  effect.   The  scene  in  which  the  frenzied 

king  recoils  a  cataleptic  from  the  embalmed  body 

155 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

of  Mariamne  is  in  the  vein  of  skilful  horror  that 
John  Webster  understood  so  well.  Later  work  by 
Mr.  Phillips  lacks  somewhat  in  both  theatrical 
and  poetic  freshness,  as  compared  with  his  earlier 
plays. 

Mr.  Barrie,  as  a  playwright,  dawned  upon  us 
in  1892,  when  his  farce,  Walker,  London,  founded 
upon  his  novel.  When  a  Man's  Single,  achieved 
marked  success.  Following  this  came  The  Pro- 
fessor's Love  Story  and  The  Little  Minister.  In 
1903,  Quality  Street,  The  Admirable  Crichton,  and 
Little  Mary  made  an  almost  simultaneous  appear- 
ance and  achieved  a  nearly  equal  prosperity. 
Later  work  by  the  same  author  has  included  his 
probable  masterpiece,  Peter  Pan,  as  well  as  the 
two  delightful  comedies,  Alice  Sit-hy-the-Fire  and 
What  Every  Woman  Knows.  Mr.  Barriers  is  a 
unique  and  charming  personality,  so  far  as  it  is 
revealed  in  his  work,  and  that  is  extensively.  In 
playwriting  his  methods  are  fresh;  and  he  has  the 
invaluable  gift  of  pathos  merging  with  humor,  as 
well  as  of  a  delightfully  satirical  fancy.  Peter  Pan 
is  in  reality  not  a  drama,  but  a  strangely  iridescent 

poetic   pantomime,    full   of   bizarre   and   tender 
156 


THE      BRITISH 

gayety.  It  is  sometimes  difficult,  indeed,  to 
determine  when  Mr.  Barrie's  intention  is  serious 
and  when  merely  humorous.  Perhaps  as  a  result 
of  this  peculiarity,  his  plays  often  fail  to  create  an 
impression  of  depth  or  sohdity.  He  is  particulariy 
felicitous  in  the  portrayal  of  the  lighter  phases  of 
feminine  character,  though  he  has  rarely  achieved 
a  full-length  study  of  a  truly  womanly  woman. 
Babbie,  in  The  Little  Minister,  is  personified  caprice. 
Phoebe  Throssell,  in  Qvxility  Street,  is  a  somehow 
disappointing  exponent  of  the  real  tragedy  involved 
in  being  deprived  of  one's  youth.  Mr.  Barrie 
rarely  depicts  more  than  the  childish  aspect  of 
adult  emotions,  and  this  fact  accounts  for  the  non- 
success  of  Moira  in  Little  Mary.  The  Admirable 
Crichton  is  pure  farce,  based  on  an  abrupt  reversal 
of  social  rank  through  the  casting  away  of  a  noble 
family  upon  an  uninhabited  island.  Nevertheless, 
it  is  of  high-comedy  grade  in  its  blending  of  wit, 
humor,  and  satire;  and  its  heroine  is  one  of  the 
most  satisfactory  feminine  figures  in  this  author's 
gallery.  In  Alice  Sit-by-the-Fire  we  find  a  similar 
mingling  of  the  facetious  and  the  ironical,  in  the 

wistful  story  of  a  middle-aged  mother's  reluctant 

157 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

abandonment  of  her  youth.  In  the  delicious 
comedy,  What  Every  Woman  Knows,  the  men, 
utterly  devoid  of  a  sense  of  humor,  can  say  or  do 
nothing  that  is  not  highly  amusing;  whereas  the 
heroine,  who  sees  the  fun  of  everything,  speaks 
almost  always  in  a  strain  of  fairly  pathetic 
tenderness. 

The  satirical  genius  of  Mr.  Barrie  has  been 
given  full  scope  in  his  charming  burlesque,  A  Slice 
of  Life.  Here  the  stage  itself,  with  its  familiar 
conventions — ^which  Mr.  Barrie  himself  is  so 
skilful  in  handling — supplies  the  target  for  many 
a  well  aimed  shaft.  The  Hyphen-Browns,  of 
course,  have  a  parlor  maid  to  start  off  with,  but 
she  is  helpless  over  the  exposition  until  she  spies 
the  telephone  and  into  its  receiver  confides  the 
information  as  to  her  identity.  Hard  pressed 
again,  she  resorts  to  reading  aloud  from  a  news- 
paper; but,  realizing  the  unpardonable  offense  of 
the  soliloquy  in  up-to-date  drama,  she  refrains 
until  she  finds  a  china  dog  to  which  she  can  read 
the  expository  item.  When  the  mistress  of  the 
house  arrives,  she  introduces  herself  to  the  audience 

by  saying  languidly  into  the  telephone,  '^  Hello,  is 
158 


THE      BRITISH 

this  you,  Father?     This  is  your  daughter — you 

remember?     Mrs.   Hyphen-Brown."     When  her 

husband  is  later  betrayed  into  an  aside,  he  is 

promptly  reproached  for  it.     Their  breakfast  is 

over  an  instant  after  it  is  begun.    The  mysterious 

telegram — ^from  the  parlor  maid — is  ostentatiously 

dropped  by  the  husband.    The  wife  remains  in  the 

twentieth  century  theatrical  fashion  by  stoutly 

resisting  her  temptation  to  read  the  message.    So 

the  little  skit  ripples  along.     Husband  and  wife 

delectably  confess  that,  regardless  of  the  stories 

they  have  told  each  other,  all  their  lives  they  have 

been  perfectly  moral.     "We  cannot  both  go  on 

living  here  like  this,"  cries  the  man  in  agony. 

Naturally,  they  toss  a  coin.    He  loses.    As  he  is 

about  to  go,  a  thought  strikes  him.    "What  is  to 

become  of  the  child?"    "There  is  no  child!"  cries 

his  wife.    "True,"  he  answers,  "I  had  forgotten." 

Then  the  woman  finds  a  solution.    "Why  cannot 

we  go  together?"  she  asks.    This  they  do.    "Out 

into  the  light!"  they  cry  rapturously,  taking  up 

their  suit-cases.   The  stage  lights  go  out,  and  a  door 

is  very  distinctly  heard  to  slam. 

This  trifle  is,  of  course,  comparatively  insignifi- 

159 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

cant.  And  yet  a  treatise  on  the  drama  to-day 
could  scarcely  be  complete  without  at  least  these 
citations  from  the  little  travesty.  The  author,  it 
will  be  noted,  hits  right  and  left  at  the  ultra- 
'' realistic"  contrivances  of  the  modern  stage,  as 
well  as  at  the  problem  play,  emotionalism,  stage 
conventionality,  and  many  other  fair  targets  for 
clever  ridicule. 

In  none  of  his  later  work  has  Mr.  Barrie 
achieved,  or  even  attempted,  the  strength  of 
situation  and  character  he  revealed  in  his  first 
dramatic  endeavors.  Into  all  that  he  writes,  how- 
ever, there  is  projected  the  exquisite,  unutterable 
charm  of  the  author's  individuality.  All  gratitude 
is  due  him  for  the  freshness  of  his  invention,  the 
spontaneity  of  his  humor,  the  genial  incisiveness  of 
his  satire,  and  the  skill  of  his  stagecraft.  Perhaps 
later  work  of  his  will  add  to  these  inestimable 
qualities  a  greater  degree  of  spiritual  dignity  and 
hence  of  artistic  as  well  as  moral  significance. 

It  is  impossible  to  conclude  even  the  briefest 

discussion  of  the  modern  British  drama  without 

reference  to  the  Irish  theatre.    Mr.  William  Butler 

Yeats  was  the  first  president  of  the  Irish  National 
160 


THE      BRITISH 

Theatre  Society,  which  has  been  largely  responsible 
for  the  fruitful  Dublin  Abbey  Theatre  movement. 
His  chief  desire  has  been  the  estabUshment  of  a 
folk  drama;  and  the  Abbey  Theatre  plays,  written 
in  the  Anglo-Irish  idiom,  are  redolent  of  the  soil. 
Mr.  Yeats  himself  is  at  his  best  in  poetic  allegory, 
clothed  in  an  atmosphere  of  delicate  fantasy.  In 
Kathleen  ni  Houlahan,  for  instance,  the  Genius  of 
Ireland,  symbolized  by  an  old  woman,  enters  a 
farmer's  cottage,  in  1798,  and,  relating  her  wrongs, 
wins  the  lover  from  the  arms  of  his  prospective 
bride  to  take  up  the  patriotic  cause  and  regain  the 
green  fields  of  his  native  land.  Particularly  happy 
is  this  writer  when  embodying  the  superstitions  of 
a  race  keenly  alive  to  the  mysterious  forces  of 
earth,  air,  and  water.  The  elves  and  sprites  of 
early  legend  live  again  in  his  poetic  plays  and 
people  a  world  of  fearful  delight. 

Quite  otherwise  is  the  work  of  the  master  realist 
who  heads  the  list  of  these  latter-day  Irish  drama- 
tists. It  was  a  great  day  for  their  movement  when 
in  1897  Mr.  Yeats  met  John  Millington  Synge,  a 
strange,  taciturn,  unpromising  journahst,  whose 

fancy  it  was  to  spend  six  months  of  the  year  in  the 
11  161 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

Latin  Quarter  of  Paris  and  the  other  six  months 
among  the  odd  peasantry  living  in  the  islands  off 
the  coast  of  Ireland.  By  Mr.  Yeats's  advice, 
Sjnige  for  the  first  time  tried  his  hand  at  the  Anglo- 
Irish  dialect,  producing  that  notable  work,  In  the 
Shadow  of  the  Glen.  Not  long  afterwards  came 
Riders  to  the  Sea  and  The  Well  of  the  Saints.  Then 
appeared  The  Playboy  of  the  Western  World,  called 
by  George  Moore  ''the  most  original  piece  of  stage 
literature  that  has  been  written  since  Elizabethan 
times." 

In  the  Shadow  of  the  Glen  is  a  strange  little 
tragi-comedy,  relating  how  a  jealous  husband  tests 
his  wife's  fidelity  by  pretending  to  die.  When  she 
agrees  to  marry  a  suspected  lover,  the  husband 
revives  and  both  men  cast  her  off.  Luckily  there 
is  a  tramp  at  hand,  who  carries  her  away  with  him. 
Riders  to  the  Sea  is  more  truly  tragic,  a  little  master- 
piece of  pathos,  filled  with  a  sense  of  inevitable 
doom.  It  depicts  the  quiet  sorrow  of  a  mother 
whose  six  sons  have  one  by  one  become  the  victims 
of  the  remorseless  sea.  She  ends  the  drama,  saying 
gently:     "Michael  has  a  clean  burial  in  the  far 

north,  by  the  grace  of  the  Almighty  God.    Bartley 
162 


THE      BRITISH 

will  have  a  fine  cofl&n  out  of  the  white  boards,  and 
a  deep  grave  surely.  What  more  can  we  want  than 
that?  No  man  at  all  can  be  living  forever,  and  we 
must  be  satisfied." 

Partly  because  of  the  opposition  it  has  aroused 
among  a  certain  class  of  soi-disant  Irish  patriots, 
The  Playboy  of  the  Western  World  is  the  most 
noted  play  in  the  Abbey  Theatre's  repertory.  This 
poetic  prose  drama  portrays  with  extreme  felicity 
the  humor,  the  susceptibility,  the  imaginativeness 
of  a  generous  peasantry.  Christy  Mahon,  a  young 
fugitive,  who  thinks  he  has  slain  his  ruffian  of  a 
father  with  a  blow  of  a  loy,  arouses  the  pity,  the 
wonder,  and  finally  the  love  of  Pegeen  Mike. 
Transformed  by  her  love  into  a  marvel  of  courage, 
Christy  achieves  heroic  honors  only  to  lose  them 
when  his  merely  stunned  parent  comes  after  him. 
The  boy  tries  again  to  kill  his  father;  and  then, 
face  to  face  with  the  reality,  the  disenchanted 
Pegeen  learns  that  ''there's  a  great  gap  between 
a  gallous  story  and  a  dirty  deed."  The  only  play- 
boy in  the  western  world  goes  off  with  his  father, 
boasting,  however,  that  he  will  submit  to  no  more 

paternal  tyranny.     Throughout,  the  dialogue  is 

163 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

quaint  and  picturesque,  and  the  characterization 
is  minute  and  truthful. 

Less  noted,  but  perhaps  even  more  worth 
while  than  The  Playboy,  is  The  Well  of  the  Saints, 
a  strange  story  of  an  old  blind  pair,  whose  miracu- 
lously recovered  sight  reveals  to  them  only  un- 
guessed  ugliness  in  place  of  their  inner  visions  of 
ideal  beauty.  Blindness  once  more  becomes  only 
too  welcome,  for  it  brings  oblivion  to  evil  and 
restores  them  to  comfort  and  understanding  and 
sympathy.  No  more  wiU  old  Martin  Doul  be 
touched  with  the  holy  water  and  so  made  like  to 
*'the  little  children  that  do  be  listening  to  the 
stories  of  an  old  woman,  and  do  be  dreaming  after 
in  the  dark  night  that  it's  in  grand  houses  of  gold 
they  are,  with  speckled  horses  to  ride,  and  do  be 
waking  again,  in  a  short  while,  and  they  destroyed 
with  the  cold,  and  the  thatch  dripping,  maybe, 
and  the  starved  ass  braying  in  the  yard."  Rarely 
has  the  bitter  conflict  between  reality  and  the 
ideal  been  more  poignantly  set  forth. 

Among  the  other  writers  for  the  Abbey  Theatre 

stage  should  be  mentioned,  at  least.  Lady  Augusta 

Gregory,  Lennox  Robinson,  William  Boyle,  and 
164 


THE      BRITISH 

St.  John  G.  Ervine.     Lady  Gregory  has  written 

many  pleasant  folk-tale  comedies  in. a  charmingly 

simple  and  racy  idiom.    In  Hyacinth  Halvy,  for 

example,  we  are  introduced  to  the  pompous  talk 

and  the  laughable  scheming  of  a  simple  and  obscure 

people.     The  hero,  a  paragon  of  virtue,  makes  a 

desperate  effort  to  live  down  his  reputation.    He 

begins  by  stealing  a  sheep,  but  the  officers  of  the 

law  are  already  after  its  owner  for  harboring  tainted 

meat,  and  Hyacinth  is  commended  generally  for 

having  saved  the  man  he  really  sought  to  rob. 

Again,  when  Halvy  bribes  a  boy  to  steal  from  the 

contribution  box  and  himself  assumes  the  guilt, 

he  is  credited  with  self-sacrificing  charity.     The 

moral  is:  Give  a  dog  a  good  name — and  he  can 

do  no  wrong.    In  The  Image,  Lady  Gregory  offers 

another  of  the  many  delightful  farces  she  has 

written  to  relieve  the  gloomy  impression  produced 

by  the  numerous  tragedies  of  her  co-laborers. 

There  is  a  dispute  among  village  folk  as  to  the 

highest  use  of  the  money  to  be  derived  from  the 

carcasses  of  two  large  whales  which  have  been 

washed  ashore;  but,  before  the  intricate  squabble 

is  brought  to  a  conclusion,  the  sea  washes  its  gifts 

165 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

away  again.  The  dreams  of  the  villagers  are  thus 
rudely  dissipated;  ''the  more  ecstatic  the  vision, 
the  more  impossible  its  realization,  until  that  time 
when,  after  the  shadows  of  earth,  the  seer  shall 
awake  and  be  satisfied." 

Of  the  contributions  by  Lennox  Robinson  to 
the  new  Irish  theatre,  the  satirical  Harvest  deserves 
special  mention.  Old  William  Lordan  has  spent 
his  life  educating  the  neighborhood  peasant  chil- 
dren, only  to  incite  a  number  of  them  to  the  most 
distressing  conduct.  The  satire,  of  course,  shows 
the  harm  of  indiscriminate  schooling,  the  ill  effects 
of  injudicious  education  upon  weak  characters. 
True  progress,  the  moral  runs,  comes  only  from 
a  gradual  evolution.  This  play,  like  The  Building 
Fund  of  William  Boyle,  is  skilfully  constructed  and 
peopled  with  sharply  drawn  characters.  It  is  a 
comedy  picture  of  avarice  contending  with  eager 
heirs.  Less  happy  is  The  Mineral  Workers,  a  play 
which  suffers  from  the  slightness  and  perhaps  the 
non-dramatic  nature  of  its  theme.  In  Family 
Failing  this  author  stretches  a  slender  fable  across 
a  loose-jointed  and  wordy  three-act  comedy,  into 

which,  however,  he  introduces  several  interesting 
166 


THE      BRITISH 

types.  Dominic  Donnelly,  for  example,  is  a  sort 
of  Irish  Napoleon  Jackson,  whose  fatalism  most 
conveniently  absolves  him  from  over-exertion. 
''Whin  we  were  down  before,"  he  observes,  as  he 
learns  that  the  last  bit  of  bacon  is  gone,  ''God  took 
poor  Uncle  Andrew.  Ye  can't  tell  what  a  day  may 
bring  forth." 

Mixed  Marriage,  by  St.  John  G.  Ervine,  pro- 
poses the  difficult  problem  of  Protestant  and 
Catholic  national  and  matrimonial  unions.  The 
Catholic  heroine's  death  alone  brings  the  drama 
to  a  solution.  In  The  Magnanimous  Lover  this 
writer  has  made  his  contribution  to  the  growing 
list  of  latter-day  denials  that  marriage  is  a  com- 
plete reparation  to  a  wronged  girl.  Sudermann's 
Die  Heimat  is,  of  course,  the  pioneer  in  this  field. 
Where  Mr.  Boyle's  dramas  are  spineless  and  re- 
dundant, the  work  of  Mr.  Ervine  is  usually  com- 
pact and  effective  in  the  highest  degree. 

In  all  the  leading  work  of  the  Irish  playwrights, 
sunplicity  and  veracity  lend  the  principal  distinc- 
tion to  plays  most  skilfully  adapted  to  the  theatre. 
These  authors,  like  the  actors  that  have  interpreted 

them,  have  sought  for  their  material  and  their 

167 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

effects,  not  on  the  stage,  but  in  life.  They  have 
gone  into  the  country,  among  the  cottages  of  the 
peasants,  into  the  shady  glen,  and  along  the 
mysterious  shores  of  ocean;  and  what  they  have 
found  is  strong  and  true  and  full  of  the  simple, 
naive  charm' of  the  elemental  and  the  picturesque 
in  nature  and  in  human  nature.  The  lesson  of 
their  achievements  is  plain  to  all  followers  of  the 
dramatic  art. 


168 


THE  CONTINENTALS 

A  MONG  the  dramatists  of  the  last  two  or 
/  %  three  decades  who  have  written  in  other 
J  m  languages  than  English,  a  few  great 
names  stand  out  as  of  first  significance.  Such, 
for  example,  are  Ibsen  and  Strindberg,  Haupt- 
mann  and  Sudermann,  Maeterlinck  and  Ros- 
tand, Hervieu  and  D'Annunzio,  Bernstein  and 
Brieux.  Any  consideration  of  the  playwrights 
whose  influence  is  most  marked  upon  the  acted 
drama  of  our  own  time  must  at  least  make  men- 
tion of  these  authors,  of  their  general  character- 
istics, and  of  their  leading  works.  Representing  as 
they  do  ^diverse  nationalities  and  racial  qualities 
often  quite  different  from  those  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxons,  these  dramatists  have,  of  course,  contrib- 
uted a  wide  range  of  matter  and  form  to  the 
contemporary  stage. 

It  has  become  a  fashion  among  critics  to  relate 
all    developments    in    the    latter-day    drama    to 

Henrik  Ibsen,   either  as  their  progenitor  or  at 

169 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

least  as  their  sponsor.  His ' '  retrospective  method, " 
for  instance,  has  been  often  lauded.  We  have 
heard  much  of  his  plays'  being  simply  expanded 
fifth  acts.  His  abandonment  of  the  soliloquy  and 
the  aside,  his  use  of  fewer  characters  and  less 
scenery,  his  delayed  exposition  have  all  been  much 
exploited.  However,  the  ''retrospective  method" 
of  Ibsen  is  sometimes  what  it  is  in  The  Master 
Builder,  for  example,  merely  the  placing  forward 
of  two  chairs  while  one  character  says  to  another, 
"Sit  down,  and  I  will  tell  you  a  story."  As  for 
"delayed  exposition,"  more  than  once  it  is  so 
long  delayed  that  its  opportunity  for  an  interested 
hearing  has  been  quite  lost.  When  we  come  to 
Ibsen's  dialogue,  on  the  other  hand,  we  must 
admit  its  naturalness — except  where  he  lapses 
into  over-fantastic  symbolism;  its  short  speeches, 
broken  and  fragmentary  as  in  real  life;  and  its 
admirable  economy  in  story-telling  and  character- 
ization. Moreover,  Ibsen  restored  to  the  modern 
stage  something  of  the  inevitability  of  Greek 
tragedy. 

The  fundamental  theme  which  distinguishes 

the  whole  body  of  Ibsen's  dramas  is  the  revolt  of 
170 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

individualism  against  conventional  discipline.  His 
plays  constitute  a  picture  gallery  of  impressive 
male  and  female  figures,  each  in  conflict  with  a 
set  of  conditions  strongly  imposed  from  without. 
The  strange  mariner  in  The  Lady  from  the  Sea, 
for  example,  personifies  the  untamable  element  as 
a  symbol  of  restless  self-will  and  detachment  from 
civiUzation.  It  is  not  surprising  that,  though  the 
playwright  has  endeavored  to  give  this  stranger  a 
definite  human  personahty,  he  has  not  succeeded. 
In  fact,  all  of  Ibsen's  plays  suffer  more  or  less  from 
that  disease  of  excessive  symbolism  which  antag- 
onizes the  fundamental  illusion  of  reality  upon 
which  the  success  of  the  stage  depends.  In  The 
Master  Builder  we  have  the  most  mystical  flights 
of  emblematic  poetry  thrust  into  the  most  prosaic 
surroundings — "the  middle-aged  architect,  amid 
his  specifications  and  T-squares,  pursued  by  the 
forward  minx  and  goaded  into  climbing  a  tower 
from  which  he  tumbles  headlong,  in  presence  of 
his  wife's  lady  visitors  and  the  brass  band  of  the 
Masons'  Union."  The  contrast  is  too  great  to 
permit  of  conviction:  we  wonder  at  the  strange- 
ness of  such  a  content  in  such  a  form,  and  end  by 

171 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

being  bored  with  a  strictly  closet  drama  upon  the 
acting  stage.  Similarly,  the  stranger  in  The  Lady 
from  the  Sea  remains  an  allegorical  abstraction 
throughout  a  play  of  mingled  realism  and  mysti- 
cism. In  Rosmersholm  the  same  defect  militates 
against  the  play's  success  in  action.  These  two 
plays  are  really  complementary:  the  latter  shows 
balked  individuality  ending  in  death,  rather  than, 
as  in  the  former,  gratified  individuality  leading  to 
well-being.  In  general,  the  earlier  plays  are  less 
effective  for  the  stage  than  are  the  dramas  of 
Ibsen's  middle  period.  Pillars  of  Society,  for 
instance,  has  some  good  theatrical  situations,  but 
both  its  dialogue  and  its  detail  are  redundant. 

The  plays  of  Ibsen,  like  those  of  his  maiiy 
imitators,  are  ''problem  plays."  Unlike  some  of 
his  followers,  however,  he  always  builds  his  drama 
around  a  central  struggle.  In  A  DolVs  House  the 
conflict  is  between  a  woman's  conscience  and  the 
conventions  of  society.  In  Ghosts  traditionary 
creeds  are  at  war  with  revolutionary  theories. 
In  The  Wild  Duck  imaginative  idealism  is  at  odds 
\yith  an  incapacity  for  action.     In  Rosmersholm 

the  old  culture  struggles  against  the  new.     In 
172 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

Ldttle  Eyolf  the  antagonism  is  between  sensual  and 
maternal  passions.  Further,  in  most  of  these 
plays,  the  smothering  of  truth  beneath  inadequate 
moral  conventions  furnishes  the  essential  material. 
In  Pillars  of  Society  we  are  shown  the  smug  social 
egotism  of  a  small  seaport.  In  A  Doll's  House  a 
woman's  individuality  clashes  with  hypocrisy  in 
the  marriage  relation.  When  he  had  so  vividly 
pictured  social  degeneracy  in  Ghosts,  only  to  meet 
with  a  reception  even  more  frigid  than  that  ac- 
corded to  A  DolVs  House,  Ibsen  wrote  An  Enemy 
of  the  People  to  show  that,  as  Dr.  Stockmann 
declares  in  the  play,  ^'The  majority  is  never  right! 
That's  one  of  the  social  lies  a  free,  thinking  man 
is  bound  to  rebel  against.  Who  make  up  the 
majority  in  any  given  country?  Is  it  the  wise 
men  or  the  fools?  .  .  .  What  sort  of  truths 
do  the  majority  rally  round?  Truths  that  are 
decrepit  with  age.  When  a  truth  is  as  old  as  that, 
then  it's  in  a  fair  way  to  become  a  lie."  In  other 
words,  as  the  writer  of  the  problem  play  usually 
maintains,  the  principal  evils  in  life  spring  from 
the  discrepancy  between  actual  and  conventional 

morality.    To  achieve  reforms,  then,  the  first  step 

173 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

is  to  discard  the  outworn  traditions.  For  the  most 
part,  this  is  a  romantic  and  external  sort  of  reform, 
preached  generally  with  the  emphasis  upon  human 
rights,  rather  than  upon  mutual  obligations.  Of 
course,  it  is  the  logical  application  of  an  indi- 
vidualistic philosophy, — the  revolt  of  romanticism 
against  restraint — of  whatever  sort. 

The  excesses  of  individualism  have  often  led  to 
seK-parody.  Perhaps  that  is  what  Ibsen  has  given 
us  in  The  Wild  Duck,  a  play  which  portrays  the 
merely  harmful  results  of  a  morbid  idealist's  prob- 
ing into  the  weaknesses  of  his  fellows.  The  in- 
evitable outcome  of  the  stress  upon  the  ego  is 
pessimism.  We  see  this  most  strongly  marked  in 
the  plays  of  August  Strindberg,  another  northern 
revolutionary  who  fiercely  satirizes  humanity  and 
wages  relentless  warfare  against  all  manner  of 
restraint.  This  Swedish  Schopenhauer,  basing  a 
terrific  hatred  of  woman  doubtless  largely  upon 
his  own  bitter  experiences  in  matrimony  and 
divorce,  gives  his  principal  attention  to  that 
sinister  destructive  force  that  is  connected  with 
unrestricted  passions.    The  strife  of  the  sexes  has 

rarely  been  so  terribly  presented  as  in  The  Father^ 
lU 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

where  the  contest  for  mastery  between  husband 
and  wife  results  in  the  ultimate  realization  of  the 
woman's  false  charge  of  insanity  against  her  spouse. 
Throughout  the  entire  diabolical  intrigue  she  is 
moved  by  an  irresistible  craving  for  command.  In 
The  Link  another  ill-assorted  pair  struggle  for 
control  of  the  child  that  still  holds  them  together. 
In  spite  of  a  private  agreement  to  part  in  peace, 
these  two  are  led  by  the  inevitable  into  bitter 
denunciations  of  each  other  that  finally  lose  the 
child  to  both  of  them.  Marital  incompatibility 
is  again  the  theme  of  The  Dance  of  Deathy  though 
in  this  play  it  is  the  man,  rather  than  the  woman, 
that  is  chiefly  at  fault.  In  The  Countess  Julia  the 
heroine  accomplishes  her  own  destruction  through 
her  hereditary  wilfulness.  All  these  figures  are 
manifestly  but  puppets  in  the  hands  of  the  grinning 
showman  Fate. 

As  an  artist  Strindberg  ranks  considerably  lower 
than  Ibsen.  The  Norwegian's  grasp  upon  his  ma- 
terial, as  well  as  his  skill  in  its  elaboration,  surpasses 
by  a  great  deal  the  achievements  of  this  other,  the 
last  of  the  distinguished  Scandinavian  group.    On 

the  other  hand,  Strindberg  shows  himself  often  a 

176 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

master,  not  only  of  characterization  and  atmosphere 
but  also  of  dramatic  suspense  and  of  true  tragedy. 

Individualism  is  the  main  element  in  the  con- 
tent, realism  in  the  form,  of  latter-day  drama.  The 
naturalistic  movement  in  Germany  may  be  traced 
back  as  far  as  to  Faust,  wherein  we  have  depicted 
the  swinging  over  of  German  philosophy  from 
metaphysical  speculation  to  materialism.  In  addi- 
tion to  the  promulgation  of  his  individualistic 
theories,  Nietzsche,  in  Also  sprach  Zarathustra, 
summons  German  poetry  away  from  idealistic 
visions  to  a  portrayal  of  the  real. 

In  Ibsen,  as  we  have  seen,  is  continued  the 
Nietzschean  emphasis  upon  the  development  of 
personality  as  man's  first  duty.  That  is  the  theme, 
indeed,  of  so  early  a  work  as  Brand.  In  Peer  Gynt 
the  same  notion  is  given  a  supposedly  national 
treatment.  In  his  later  dramas  Ibsen  largely 
abandons  the  poetic  form  and  seeks  after  ultra- 
realism.  An  Enemy  of  the  People  may  be  thought 
of  as  merely  a  prose  version  of  Brand.  And,  as 
the  inevitable  effect  of  realism  is  to  narrow,  so  in 
these  later  plays  the  application,  no  longer  uni- 
versal, becomes  local. 
176 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

When,  in  1878,  Ibsen  produced  Pillars  of 
Society f  he  was  widely  acclaimed  in  Germany, 
whither  he  went  to  reside.  And  it  was  upon  the 
series  of  realistic  pieces  which  he  then  wrote 
that  the  most  noteworthy  latter-day  German 
drama  has  been  modelled.  For  instance,  in  Ger- 
hart  Hauptmann's  Lonely  People  and  The  Sunken 
Bell  it  is  easy  to  trace  the  author's  obUgations  to 
Rosmersholm  and  The  Master  Builder. 

Hauptmann  is  an  extremist  among  that  inter- 
esting group  of  recent  playwrights  who,  in  their 
revolt  against  every  prescription  of  both  theatrical 
and  social  usage,  have  endeavored  to  cast  aside 
laws  of  dramatic  writing  which  have  been  built 
up  during  twenty-five  hundred  years.  For  these 
laws  and  their  effects  there  has  been  an  effort  to 
substitute  chiefly  witty  and  paradoxical  dialogue, 
as  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Shaw;  or  dull,  if  amazingly 
veracious,  photography,  as  in  the  case  of  Mr. 
Barker;  or  bold  and  brutal  naturalism,  as  exempli- 
fied by  Gerhart  Hauptmann.  In  his  first  play, 
Before  Sunrise,  Hauptmann  deliberately  discarded 
plot,   action,   hero,   character  development,   and 

unity.    The  necessary  result  was  confusion  worse 
12  177 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

confounded,  in  this  merely  photographic  represen- 
tation of  alcoholic  degeneracy.  After  he  had 
produced  several  other  equally  obnoxious  socio- 
logical theses  in  stage  form,  he  rehashed  Ros- 
mersholm — characters,  problem,  and  solution — in 
Lonely  People.  The  effect,  however,  is  in  no  wise 
comparable  to  that  of  the  Ibsen  play  with  its  Attic 
dignity.  The  Weavers  has  no  definite  hero,  no 
single  actor  even  that  lasts  throughout  the  play. 
It  simply  embodies  an  episode  in  the  life  of  a  large 
group  of  Silesian  laborers:  the  people  as  a  whole, 
represented  at  various  times  by  various  persons, 
constitutes  the  real  protagonist.  Formlessness  is 
accordingly  inevitable.  Other  purely  naturalistic 
plays  are  credited  to  Hauptmann  before  we  reach 
Hannele's  Ascension,  in  which  the  author  turns  to 
symbolism  and  effectively  utilizes  the  contrast  be- 
tween the  squalor  of  the  girl's  death  and  her  angelic 
visions. 

The  problem  of  The  Master  Builder  is  that  of 
the  artist  who  seeks  to  escape  from  an  unsympa- 
thetic environment  in  the  hope  of  realizing  his 
ideal,  but  whose  strength  is  insufficient  at  the  last 

moment.     The  three  periods  in  the  career  of 
178 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

Solness  have  been  compared  to  similar  periods  in 
Ibsen's  own  constructive  work.  The  failure  of 
the  master  builder  in  the  end  may  typify  the 
ultimate,  inevitable  failure  Ibsen  foresaw  for  him- 
self. In  The  Sunken  Bell  the  same  fundamental 
idea  has  been  attacked,  with  far  less  unity  of 
style  and  purpose.  At  all  events,  here  for  once 
Hauptmann  has  allowed  the  ideal  to  possess  him; 
and,  as  a  result,  he  has  achieved  vitaUty.  In  his 
very  next  work  he  relapses  into  ultra-naturalism 
once  more:  Teamster  Henschell  is  one  of  the  most 
hideous  and  morbid  of  naturalistic  dramas,  a  play 
in  which  even  a  literal  as  well  as  a  figurative  stench 
is  produced  upon  the  stage.  As  for  its  significance, 
there  is  none.  In  Gabriel  Schilling's  Flight,  a  neu- 
rotic artist  is  pursued  to  his  hiding-place  by  a 
vampire  mistress  and  a  discarded  wife,  whose 
hand-to-hand  fight  for  his  possession  leaves  him  a 
gibbering  idiot  whose  suicide  is  a  reUef  to  all  con- 
cerned, particularly  the  audience.  The  play  is 
loose- jointed  and  "talky"  in  the  extreme.  One 
feels  that  the  author  either  has  unconsciously  de- 
generated or  is  deliberately  pandering  to  a  degraded 

popular  taste.    At  all  events,  excessive  individual- 

179 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

ism  and  excessive  realism  are  inherently  antago- 
nistic to  the  universal:  they  restrict  themselves  to 
the  special  and  hence  the  unimportant.  Since  The 
Sunken  Bell,  Hauptmann  has  produced  little  other 
than  a  series  of  horrible  sociological  studies,  deal- 
ing with  pruriency,  disease,  adultery,  and  crime. 
And  it  is,  of  course,  a  large  question  whether  the 
mere  scientist,  when  he  thrusts  himself  out  upon 
the  stage,  is  not  in  the  wrong  galley  altogether. 

To  Hauptmann  in  part,  as  to  Sudermann  much 
more  largely,  belongs  the  credit  for  restoring  the 
German  stage  of  to-day  to  its  former  influential 
position.  Sudermann  began  in  Zolaesque  natural- 
ism. Sodom^s  End  is  a  morbid  pathological  study 
of  the  consequences  of  debauchery.  In  Die  Heimat, 
written  in  1893,  however,  he  turned  to  realism 
and  produced  one  of  the  best  plays  of  the  time. 
He  had  already  won  fame  for  his  insight  into 
dramatic  technique  with  his  earlier  play.  Honor. 
Now  he  presented  a  fairly  wonderful  acting  drama. 

The  problem  in  Die  Heimat  is  the  old  one. 

Magda  is  the  temperament  that  demands  artistic 

expression  and  self-realization.     She  finds  herself 

in  direct  conflict  with  narrow-minded  convention 
180 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

embodied  in  her  father.  She  demands  the  right 
to  live  her  own  life.  "I  am  I,"  she  cries,  "and  I 
dare  not  lose  myself."  Obviously  this  is  Suder- 
mann's  echo  of  Ibsen's  echo  of  Nietzsche.  Magda 
is  the  Ubermensch  once  more.  Driven  from  her 
home,  betrayed,  growTi  famous  as  a  singer,  she 
returns  one  day  to  her  stem,  old-fashioned  father, 
her  subservient,  feeble  stepmother,  her  conven- 
tional younger  sister,  and  all  the  general  atmos- 
phere of  cut-and-dried  conduct.  The  struggle 
that  ensues  between  the  woman's  individualism 
and  the  old  set  of  conditions  is  moving  in  the 
highest  degree.  It  is  set  forth  with  much  skill  of 
character  portraiture  and  contrast,  in  striking 
situations  leading  up  to  a  logical  and  impressive 
climax.  Throughout,  the  theories  of  individualism 
supported  by  Magda  are  presented  not  in  mere 
talk  but  in  illustrative  action. 

One  of  the  strongest  passages  in  modern  drama 
is  that  in  which,  instead  of  reproaching  the  pom- 
pous, mean-spirited  coward,  once  her  betrayer, 
now  a  respected  and  pious  member  of  society, 
Magda  astounds  him  by  the  vehemence  of  her 

gratitude  for  the  part  he  has  played  in  her  life. 

181 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

"I  was  a  stupid,  thoughtless  creature,"  she  ex- 
claims, "enjoying  my  liberty  like  an  escaped 
monkey: — through  you  I  became  a  woman.  For 
whatever  height  I  have  reached  in  my  art,  for 
what  I  am  in  myself,  I  have  you  to  thank.  My 
soul  was  like  a  silent  harp,  and  through  you  the 
storm  swept  over  it;  it  has  sounded  almost  to 
breaking  the  whole  scale  of  emotions  which  brings 
us  women  to  maturity — ^love  and  hate  and  revenge 
and  ambition  and  necessity,  necessity,  necessity — 
threefold  necessity — and  the  greatest,  the  strongest 
the  highest  of  all — the  love  of  a  mother  for  a 
child! — all  that  I  owe  you." 

The  clash  of  two  conflicting  theories  of  life 
forms  the  basis  also  of  Die  Ehre.  In  this  latter 
play  it  is  a  man  that  struggles  against  opposing 
conditions.  Returning,  successful,  after  an  ab- 
sence of  years,  to  his  people  in  Berlin,  he  finds 
them  deep  in  a  sordid  selfishness  far  removed  from 
the  ideals  he  has  cherished  for  them.  Urged  to 
abandon  them,  he  refuses.  When  he  finds  that 
his  younger  sister  has  been  betrayed  by  the  prof- 
ligate son  of  his  rich  employer,  he  plans  to  redeem 

her  through  love  and  protection.    His  own  ideas 

182 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

of  honor  are  not  shared,  however,  either  by  his 
sister  or  by  the  rest  of  his  family.  When  he  is 
about  to  give  up  his  project  in  despair,  he  finds  a 
recompense  for  his  sorrows  in  the  love  of  his 
employer's  daughter. 

Die  Ehre  is  a  reaUstic  problem  play,  dealing 
with  impleasant  material,  but  containing  at  least 
two  admirable  figures.  Class  hypocrisy  and  the 
shifting  code  of  conventional  righteousness  form 
the  point  of  attack.  The  play  occasionally  tends 
too  much  to  the  didactic,  and  it  is  too  essentially 
German  to  enjoy  so  widespread  a  popularity  as 
that  of  Die  Heimat.  In  his  more  recent  work 
Sudermann  has  given  us  nothing  of  equal  signifi- 
cance. Das  Gliick  im  Winkel  {Happiness  in  a 
Comer)  is  noteworthy  chiefly  for  its  embodiment, 
in  Von  Rocknitz,  of  the  extreme  type  of  the 
Ubermensch,  and  for  a  somewhat  conventional 
ending  to  a  diflScult  story.  Schmetterlinsschaft 
{The  Butterflies'  War)  is  a  sordid  satirical  play 
with  an  incongruous  comedy  ending.  In  Morituri 
we  have  three  short  plays  showing  the  effect  of 
approaching    death    upon    character.      John   the 

Baptist  is  an  attempt  to  embody  in  an  historical 

183 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

tragedy  the  universal  love  which  is  the  ideal  of 
Christianity.  It  contains  several  notable  scenes, 
especially  that  in  which  the  great  Forerunner, 
about  to  stone  the  infamous  Herod,  is  restrained 
by  the  command  sent  by  Christ:  ''Love  your 
enemies."  In  The  Three  Heron  Feathers,  Suder- 
mann  has  presented  in  symbolic  guise  the  romantic 
search  for  the  ever-fleeting  ideal.  St.  John^s  Fire 
offers  a  rather  theatrical  presentment  of  the  in- 
fluences of  heredity  and  environment;  while  Es 
lebe  das  Leben!  a  picture  of  Berlin  society,  portrays 
the  struggle  of  another  noteworthy  female  charac- 
ter, Beata,  to  solve  the  problem  of  life.  More 
recently  this  writer  has  devised,  in  the  unimportant 
play,  A  Good  Reputation,  an  elaborately  involved 
plot  turning  on  the  ever-present  "triangular'*  situ- 
ation, which  it  can  scarcely  be  said  to  illuminate. 
Extravagant  claims  have  been  made  by  Suder- 
mann's  admirers  with  regard  to  his  rank  in  the 
world  of  the  drama.  Certain  it  is  that,  in  more 
than  one  play,  he  has  united  a  rare  technique  with 
a  keen  insight  into  life. 

"The  Belgian  Shakespeare"  is  the  formidable 

nickname  with  which  Monsieur  Maurice  Maeter- 
184 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

linck  has  had  to  struggle  almost  from  the  be- 
ginning. The  extravagance  of  this  well-meant 
but  injudicious  title  has,  doubtless,  had  a  reac- 
tionary effect  upon  this  writer's  reputation  among 
the  conservative,  if  in  another  direction,  perhaps,  it 
has  served  him  well.  With  Maeterlinck  mysticism 
is  the  key-word.  His  first  plays  were  formless  and 
vague,  as  to  both  plot  and  characterization.  They 
were  offered  as  an  effort  to  express  the  inex- 
pressible by  means  of  that  which  does  not  occur — 
a  sufficiently  difficult  task  to  set  one's  self,  surely, 
and  one  that  obviously  implies  a  resort  to  that  ser- 
vant of  vagueness,  the  symbolical.  We  had  intro- 
duced to  us  a  set  of  helpless,  unhealthy  creatures  in 
the  dire  grip  of  a  relentless,  often  monstrous  Fate, 
all  dealing  for  the  most  part  with  recurrent  and 
antiquated  symbols,  though  usually  in  a  new  and 
unwonted  way.  It  was  naturally  a  cause  of  much 
astonishment  when  the  creator  of  this  phantas- 
magoria of  spineless  figures  in  a  shadowy  dance  of 
death  abruptly  produced  a  stage  play  of  undeniable 
power.  Monna  Vanna  is,  in  fact,  a  true  drama, 
one  in  which  masterful  and  clearly  drawn  char- 
acters contend  forcefully  and  with  strong  emotional 

185 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

effect  throughout  three  intense  and  coherent,  if  de- 
layed, situations.  In  this  one  instance  alone,  how- 
ever, has  the  author  achieved  a  gripping  human 
play;  and  it  is  all  the  more  regrettable,  therefore, 
that  in  it  he  should  tamper  so  deliberately  with 
the  highest  standards  of  honor  and  virtue. 

After  Monna  Vanna,  Maeterlinck  returned  to 
his  former  manner,  producing,  in  Ariane  et  Barbe- 
Bleue,  a  strange  combination  of  the  fairy  tale  and 
the  problem  play;  in  Marie  Madeleine,  an  episodical 
Sardouesque  treatment  of  the  New  Testament;  in 
Sceur  Beatrice,  a  miracle  play  of  the  Virgin  Mary, 
in  which  the  excessive  pathos  overburdens  the 
slender  story;  and  in  UOiseau  bleu,  an  elementary 
and  obvious  allegory,  in  which  the  fantastic  and 
the  impalpable  are  given  a  substantial  embodi- 
ment. Upon  Monna  Vanna  and  The  Blue  Bird 
chiefly  rests  this  author's  reputation  as  a  play- 
wright. The  former  is  unfortunately  tainted  by 
the  sickly  morbidity  which  marks  so  much  of 
Maeterlinck's  work  for  the  stage.  As  for  UOiseau 
bleu,  it  is  a  "Christmas  pantomime"  with  words, 
at  times  delicate  and  fanciful,  but  distinctly  an 

entertainment   merely   and   not   a   drama.     Its 
186 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

extraordinary  success  must  be  due  in  large  measure 
to  the  matter-of-fact  manner  in  which  it  presents 
its  extremely  elementary  allegorical  material.  Its 
appeal  is  rather  to  children,  indeed,  than  to  adults, 
and  its  tone  is  accordingly  optimistic.  As  for 
Marie  Madeleine,  it  is  distinctly  a  closet  drama. 
Though  it  depicts  the  sharp  struggle  in  a  woman's 
heart  between  earthly  and  spiritual  love,  its  chief 
happenings  are  described,  rather  than  shown,  and 
the  action  is  lacking  in  coherence. 

Mysticism  and  symbolism  are  dangerous  tools 
for  dramatists  to  play  with,  especially  in  combina- 
tion with  each  other  and  with  realism.  Ibsen 
never  succeeded  in  perfectly  fusing  these  elements 
in  his  work,  and  Monsieur  Maeterlinck  has  had 
an  even  slighter  degree  of  success.  More  unfortu- 
nate still  is  the  latter's  fondness  for  the  unwhole- 
some. In  Monna  Vanna,  in  Joyzelle,  and  in  Marie 
Madeleine  the  repulsive  central  situation  of  Meas- 
ure for  Measure  is  treated  with  apparent  relish,  in 
a  determined  effort  to  present  instances  of  justi- 
fiable treachery  and  adultery. 

There  is  none  of  this  tendency  to  the  eccentric, 

the  disingenuous,  the  sexual,  in  the  dramatic  work 

187 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

of  that  other  modern  romanticist,  Monsieur 
Edmond  Rostand.  Beginning  with  Les  Roman- 
esques in  1894,  this  briUiant  dramatist  and  poet 
has  produced  a  series  of  remarkable  plays,  including 
La  Princesse  Lointaine,  La  Samaritaine,  Cyrano 
de  Bergerac,  VAiglon,  and  Chantecler. 

The  first  of  the  group — if,  indeed,  La  Samari- 
taine was  not  written  before  Les  Romanesques — is 
a  graceful,  light-hearted  little  comedy,  exquisite 
and  precise  in  verse  and  dialogue,  gay,  fleeting,  and 
delicate.  "The  time  of  the  play  is  immaterial," 
says  the  author,"  provided  the  costumes  be  pretty." 
For  plot,  a  traditional  farce  has  been  inverted, 
presenting  two  friendly  fathers,  who,  wishing 
their  children  to  marry  each  other,  make  the  course 
of  true  love  rough  and  so  gratify  the  youngsters' 
dreams  of  romance.  Although  it  lacks  continuity 
of  structure,  there  being  a  break  of  interest  at 
least  between  the  first  and  second  acts,  the  spirit 
of  drollery  that  permeates  thisWatteau  travesty 
on  young  love  makes  the  slender  story  of  Percinet 
and  Sylvette  and  their  adventures  at  the  hands  of 
the  swash-buckler  Straforel  an  altogether  delightful 

journey  into  the  blue  distance. 
188 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

Rostand's  sole  experiment  in  mysticism  is 
represented  by  La  Samantaine,  sl  miracle  play  of 
the  woman  of  Samaria.  Distinctly  pre-Raphaelite 
in  spirit,  this  ''gospel  in  three  tableaus"  is  rather 
a  dramatic  poem  than  a  play.  It  is  not  lacking, 
however,  in  obvious  mastery  of  stage  effect; 
though  occasionally  the  inexperience  of  the  youth- 
ful dramatist  is  manifest. 

La  Princesse  Lointaine  relates  once  more  the 
antique  story  of  Rudel  and  the  Lady  of  Tripoli. 
With  extraordinary  felicity  the  poet  maintains 
throughout  his  version  of  this  venerable  legend  the 
atmosphere  of  the  remote  past.  A  pair  of  Pro- 
vencal troubadours  go  forth  in  quest  of  a  far-away 
princess,  the  fame  of  whose  beauty  has  caused 
them  to  languish  at  home  for  years.  Throughout 
the  play  we  find  a  subtle  blending  of  the  idealities 
of  love  with  the  actualities  of  passion,  but  always — 
spite  of  the  lovesick  hero  and  the  exotic  heroine — 
it  is  emotion  without  morbidity  and  free  from  all 
closeness  of  air. 

Universally  regarded  as  Rostand's  master- 
piece, Cyrano  de  Bergerac,  an  "heroic  comedy"  of 

the  period  of  RicheUeu,  shows  the  author  at  the 

189 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

zenith  of  his  achievement  both  as  poet  and  as 
playwright.  Instinctively  avoiding  all  the  out- 
lawed complications,  he  presents,  with  superb 
mastery  of  stagecraft,  magnanimous  and  vital 
characters  in  an  intricate  and  swiftly  moving  plot. 
The  central  figure  is  undoubtedly  a  permanent 
addition  to  the  world-gallery  of  romantic  portraits, 
headed  by  Don  Quixote  and  Don  Juan.  Doubtless 
these  are  all  distinct  types  in  the  drama,  destined 
to  survive  as  no  mere  realistic,  and  therefore  tem- 
porary, character  may  hope  to  do.  Cyrano  is  the 
grotesque  made  hero,  and  wonderfully  sympa- 
thetic in  his  power  to  secure,  not  for  himself,  but 
for  others  only,  the  rewards  of  his  genius  and  of 
his  nobility  of  soul.  Though  relinquishing  his 
own  happiness,  too,  this  subtle  protagonist  is  con- 
scious of  being  loved  in  the  person  of  another.  A 
tender  poet,  he  is  forced  by  a  monstrous  nose  to  act 
the  bully.  Altogether,  there  has  been  nothing  at 
all  so  distinctive  as  this  character  since  Figaro. 

The  faults  of  Cyrano  de  Bergerac  are  resultant 
chiefly  upon  the  playwright's  exuberance.     His 
play  is  presented  by  nearly  sixty  speaking  charac- 
ters, in  addition  to  a  mob.    In  fact,  superabundance 
190 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

is  not  confined  to  the  dramatis  personce:  the  twists 
and  turns  of  incident  and  intrigue  are  ever  luxuri- 
ant, while  the  dialogue  fairiy  droops  under  the 
excess  of  dazzling  virtuosity.  In  his  later  plays, 
UAiglon  and,  particularly,  Chantecler,  the  author 
has  allowed  his  work  to  be  still  more  seriously 
marred  by  similar  extravagances.  UAiglon  has, 
too,  the  poignancy  of  moral  tragedy,  without  the 
effectiveness  of  true  drama.  This  is  due,  doubtless, 
to  the  fact  that  it  is  purely  a  play  of  failure,  in 
which  the  actual  achievements  of  the  protagonist 
are  nil.  For  such  achievements  the  load  of  curious 
and  often  fascinating  incident  makes  but  a  feeble 
substitute.  Wonderfully  convincing,  however,  is 
the  sharp  contrast  of  the  Napoleonic  epic  against  a 
background  of  triviality.  Somewhere  behind  all  the 
pathetic  helplessness  of  the  vacillating  Eaglet  lurks 
the  mighty  spirit  of  the  once  all-conquering  Eagle. 
*'The  best  advertised  play  of  modern  times" 
was  Chantecler,  the  poetic  drama  of  the  barnyard, 
for  which  its  author  made  an  eager  world  wait 
with  increasing  impatience,  until,  indeed,  he 
achieved  for  himself  a  reputation  for  that  sort  of 

charlatanry  which  so  largely  distinguishes  the  **big 

191 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

names"  of  a  press-agenting  age.  Certainly  it  is 
difficult  to  see  how  a  man  is  to  avoid  great  pub- 
licity with  regard  to  his  forthcoming  works  when, 
within  a  few  years,  the  world  has  seen  him  spring 
from  comparative  obscurity  into  fame,  wealth, 
and  a  seat  in  the  French  Academy,  not  to  say  the 
successorship  to  Victor  Hugo.  At  all  events, 
Chantecler  measured  well  up  to  the  highest  expec- 
tations its  announcement  had  aroused,  from  the 
poetic,  if  not  from  the  dramatic,  standpoint.  A 
play  without  human  characters,  in  which  birds 
and  beasts  of  Brobdingnagian  size,  in  an  environ- 
ment of  proportionate  magnitude,  Chantecler  is 
Rostand's  contribution  to  sjnmbolism — a  different 
contribution  and  a  different  symbolism  from  any- 
thing of  Monsieur  Maeterlinck's.  For  its  main 
theme,  the  play  takes  the  first  problem  of  philoso- 
phy, the  relation  of  man  to  the  universe.  That 
''Cyrano  in  feathers,"  Chantecler,  is  primarily 
masculine  and  French.  But  he  is  much  more:  he 
is  humanity — the  human  race  seeing  in  its  own 
earth  the  centre  of  the  universe.  Good  symbols 
are  always  generally  applicable.     For  all  those 

who  exaggerate  self-importance  comes  disillusion- 
192 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

ment.  Man  has  had  to  realize  in  general,  as  men 
have  had  to  realize  in  particular,  that  he  is  but  a 
detail — rather  a  minor  one  at  that — in  the  swinging 
of  the  spheres.  Underlying  the  whole  allegory  of 
Chantecler  is  the  call  to  faith  and  enthusiasm,  the 
indomitable  courage  of  the  worker,  the  glory  of 
singing  and  the  aspiration  that  makes  it  glorious, 
together  with  the  everlasting  triumph  of  idealism 
over  disillusion. 

Monsieur  Rostand's  growing  tendency  to  the 
intricate  is  to  be  deplored.  The  characterization 
of  Chantecler  is  most  admirable;  the  method  of 
presentation,  however,  is  leisurely  to  a  degree.  In 
fact,  the  play  is  primarily  one  of  atmosphere  and 
character,  rather  than  of  incident.  Of  course,  here 
is  poetry  instead  of  action,  and  fancy  in  place  of 
cumulative  situation.  Best  of  all,  it  is  eminently 
sane  and  wholesome — Uke  a  great  and  glorious 
current  of  fresh  air  after  the  close  and  stuffy 
atmosphere  of  Ibsen,  the  misty,  sickly  gloom  of 
Maeterlinck,  the  loathsome  putrescence  of  Haupt- 
mann,  and  the  pathological  miasma  of  D'Annunzio. 

This  last-named  writer,  whose  main  achieve- 
ment has  been  that  of  restoring  Itahan  literature 
13  193 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

to  a  deep  interest  in  its  own  past,  combines  in  his 
loosely  built  fabrics  of  gloom  and  horror  and 
infamy  the  pessimism  of  Ibsen  with  the  mysticism 
of  Maeterlinck  and  the  brutality  of  Hauptmann. 
D'Annunzio's  plays  are,  for  the  most  part,  hastily 
written.  Consequently,  his  plots  are  often  inco- 
herent and  his  characters  poorly  drawn.  The 
Daughter  of  Jorio,  for  instance,  was  written  in 
thirty-three  days.  It  has  its  color  and  its  fine 
scenes.  La  Fiaccola  sotto  il  Moggio  {The  Fire 
beneath  the  Ashes)  is  typical  D'Annunzio:  all 
possible  horror  and  wickedness  woven  into  a  story 
enacted  by  rude  and  savage,  as  well  as  vaguely 
sketched,  characters. 

Turning  again  to  the  French  stage,  we  find,  far 
more  representative  of  its  main  tendencies  than  is 
Rostand,  such  realists  as  Paul  Hervieu,  Eugene 
Brieux,  Maurice  Donnay,  and  Henri  BataiUe.  The 
first-named  author's  titles  include  Les  Tenailles, 
L'Enigme,  Le  Dedale,  Theroigne  de  Mericourt,  and 
Connais-toi.  In  The  Passing  of  the  Torch  we  have 
a  typical  specimen  of  modem  tragedy  based  upon 
the  inscrutable  sacrifice  by  Nature  of  generation 

after  generation  of  hiunan  life.     Taking  for  his 
194 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

theme  the  readiness  of  parents  to  throw  themselves 
upon  the  altar  for  the  benefit  of  their  children, 
Monsieur  Hervieu  works  out  his  structure  with 
remarkable  precision  and  impeccable  logic.  Chil- 
dren, declares  Maravon,  the  ^'raisonneur"  of  the 
play,  acquit  themselves  of  their  debt  to  their 
parents  by  bringing  other  children  into  the  world. 
Thus  the  torch  is  passed  from  hand  to  hand.  It 
is,  of  course,  a  thesis  play,  and  so  involves  much 
of  the  didacticism  ever  associated  with  that  genre. 
"Filial  gratitude  is  not  spontaneous;  it  is  an  effort 
of  civilization,  a  frail  attempt  at  virtue."  Mon- 
sieur Hervieu  illustrates  this  thesis  by  portraying 
the  sacrifice  of  a  woman  who,  for  her  daughter's 
sake,  steals  from  her  own  mother,  only  to  be 
rewarded  by  desertion  on  the  part  of  the  daughter, 
who  goes  away  with  her  husband.  At  the  climax 
of  this  story  of  the  ingratitude  of  the  second  genera- 
tion, the  heroine's  own  mother  dies  as  a  result  of 
having  been  carried  off  to  the  Alps  by  the  heroine 
against  a  physician's  advice.  Thus  the  protagonist 
herself  is  left  in  tragic  loneliness  to  make  the  grim 
confession:  "For  my  daughter  I  have  murdered 
my  mother!" 

195 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

Les  Tenailles  is  a  similar  analysis  of  marriage. 
In  this,  as  in  numerous  other  dramas,  Monsieur 
Hervieu  has  shown  himself  in  deadly  earnest. 
Latterly,  however,  he  has  begun  to  exhibit  a 
degree  of  philosophic  serenity.  In  Bagatelle  he 
presents  a  sort  of  double  "triangle"  of  adultery, 
wherein  the  two  men  are  bosom  friends.  When 
they  rendezvous  in  the  same  place  with  each 
other's  wives,  there  is  naturally  a  large  opportunity 
for  displaying  love,  jealousy,  and  friendship,  both 
masculine  and  feminine,  in  intricate  conflict.  With 
the  faithless  husband,  it  is  his  friend's  treachery 
that  hurts,  rather  than  his  wife's  revenge.  Finally, 
however,  all  parties  to  the  controversy,  in  a  dis- 
tinctly "French"  spirit,  admit  that  time  wiU  trans- 
form these  near-tragic  affairs  of  the  heart  into 
trifles.  In  keenness  of  satire  Hervieu  is  unsur- 
passed. Bagatelle  itself,  in  fact,  is  an  illustration 
in  bitter  irony  of  the  inability  of  the  idle  and  per- 
verted rich  to  make  their  chief  amusement  and 
business  in  life  anything  more  than  a  "mere 
bagatelle." 

Mr.    George    Bernard    Shaw    has    spoken    of 

Eugene  Brieux  as  the  greatest  French  playwright 
196 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

since  Moliere.  Others  have  referred  to  him  as  "a 
kind  of  maniacal  demon  ferreting  out  his  characters 
from  the  mews  and  gutters."  Mr.  Shaw  adds :  "  He 
is  a  born  dramatist,  differing  from  the  other  drama- 
tists only  in  that  he  has  a  large  mind  and  a  scientific 
habit  of  using  it."  Others,  again,  describe  him  as 
"the  dramatist  of  the  unmentionable."  A  "prob- 
lem playwright,"  Monsieur  Brieux  always  attacks 
some  sociological,  economic,  or  political  abuse. 
Matemite  searches  out  the  evils  embodied  in  the 
conventional  rule:  No  motherhood  without  mar- 
riage, and  no  marriage  without  money.  La  Robe 
rouge,  perhaps  its  author's  masterpiece,  deals 
with  defects  in  French  court  procedure.  Suzette 
takes  up  the  question  of  outraged  motherhood. 
Like  La  Foi,  it  is  dull  and  didactic;  moreover,  the 
general  unpleasantness  is  not  counterbalanced  by 
any  sufficient  sympathy  for  the  agonized  mother. 
Les  Hannetons  depicts  the  diurnal  tiffs  of  an 
illegally  and  a  mismated  pair.  It  offers  no  direct 
moral  teaching,  but  a  rather  cynical  satire,  in  its 
treatment  of  a  sordid  group  in  a  repellent  setting. 
In  Les  Avaries,  which  succeeded  in  shocking  even 

the  sensibilities  of  Paris,  this  writer  invades  the 

197 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

farthest  limits  of  that  sociological  territory  which 
is  generally  considered  wholly  unavailable  for 
stage  purposes.  Under  the  title,  Damaged  Goods, 
this  tremendous  indictment  of  civilization's  great- 
est failure,  the  conspiracy  of  silence  with  regard  to 
sex,  has  lately  been  acted  in  New  York  and  other 
American  cities,  producing  a  profound  and  signifi- 
cant impression.  Once  we  grant  that  the  taboo  on 
such  topics  should  be  banished  from  the  theatre, 
we  must  realize  that,  if  Les  Avaries  were  as  artistic 
as  a  play  as  it  is  salutary  as  a  tract,  its  capabilities 
for  enlightenment  would  be  almost  unlimited. 
Contrasted  with  Ibsen's  masterly  Ghosts,  which 
deals  with  the  same  subject,  the  Brieux  play,  with 
its  sketchy,  impersonal  figures  and  its  attenuated 
story,  seems  rather  cinematographic  than  dra- 
matic. Perhaps,  however,  its  audacity  and  its 
novelty  will  sufficiently  redeem  it,  so  that  it  may 
serve  its  purpose  as  an  antidote  to  the  suggestive 
prurience  that  is  the  blight  upon  modern  nonde- 
script stage  amusements. 

La  Femme  seule  is  a  tract  against  celibacy.    The 
lone  woman  is  shown  ineffectually  struggling  for 

independence  in  the  home,  in  business,  and  in  the 
198 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

world  of  labor.  Everywhere  the  selfishness  and 
the  brutality  of  man  prevail  against  her.  But  ulti- 
mately she  will  win.  This  is,  indeed,  the  moral 
which  the  play  has  been  ruthlessly  made  to  fit,  a 
moral  which  is  expressed  as  follows : 

"In  this  new  war  of  the  sexes  the  men  will  be 
beaten,  since  women  work  for  less  wages.  They 
require  no  surplus  money  to  carry  off  to  the  wine- 
shops. And  not  only  the  laborers  will  be  defeated 
in  this  way.  Monsieur  F^liat!  Middle-class  boys 
who  haven't  the  backbone  to  marry  girls  with  no 
money  of  their  own  will  find  these  girls  pretty 
soon  blocking  the  road — these  unfortunate  girls 
who  are  driven  to  work  by  the  men  themselves. 
You've  got  to  take  sides!  New  times  have  come. 
In  all  nations,  in  all  cities,  in  the  country,  among 
the  poor  and  the  half  poor,  out  of  every  home 
deserted  for  alcohol  or  emptied  by  men  who  haven't 
the  courage  to  marry,  there  is  coming  also  a  wo- 
man, who  is  going  to  abandon  the  home  and  take 
her  place  alongside  the  men,  in  the  factory,  in  the 
workshop,  in  the  office,  behind  the  counter.  The 
men  don't  want  her  to  be  a  housekeeper;  and,  as 

she  will  not  be  a  prostitute,  she  will  become  a 

190 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

worker  and  a  competitor — and  a  victorious  com- 
petitor!" 

Obviously  La  Femme  seule  is  not  much  as  a 
play.  It  would  have  been  more  as  a  tract,  if  it 
had  made  clear  the  impossibility  of  matrimony  for 
its  energetic  heroine. 

The  familiar  French  marriage  of  convenience 
furnishes  most  of  the  material  for  the  vital  but 
tasteless  drama,  The  Three  Daughters  of  Monsieur 
Dupont.  In  this,  as  in  his  other  work.  Monsieur 
Brieux  presents  an  exaggerated  portrayal  of  an 
exceptional  instance  as  if  it  were  the  rule.  Perhaps 
as  much  may  be  said,  however,  for  practically  all 
thesis  plays,  the  justification — if  there  be  any — 
resting  in  the  exigencies  of  stage  emphasis.  At  all 
events,  drama  of  this  type  requires  a  much  greater 
amount  of  theatrical  interest  than  Monsieur  Brieux 
usually  puts  into  his  work,  if  it  is  to  be  redeemed 
for  the  general  public  from  the  unpardonable 
tedium  of  non-dramatic  talk. 

More  akin  to  Paul  Hervieu  is  Monsieur  Henri 

Bataille,who  possesses  a  somewhat  similar  ability  to 

give  to  familiar  material  an  unfamiliar  treatment. 

In  La  Femme  nv£,  for  example,  the  painter's  wife, 
200 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

once  his  model,  is  an  exponent  of  "the  nude" 
metaphorically,  just  as  she  once  was  literally;  that 
is,  she  stands  for  single-heartedness  and  simplicity 
in  a  contrasting  world  of  hypocritical  prejudices 
and  conventions.  She  is  set  over  against  a  rival 
who  is  the  utter  embodiment  of  self-consciousness 
and  artificiality.  In  the  duel  between  them  the 
child  of  nature  is  vanquished.  Her  husband  and 
her  rival  go  their  way  together,  being  impelled  by 
forces  irresistible;  and  the  author  has  too  whole- 
some a  regard  for  truth  to  belie  inevitability  for 
the  sake  of  commonplace  moralizing.  The  guilty 
pair  are  bound  together  indissolubly  by  an  "artis- 
tic" passion;  and — Uke  true  individuahsts — they  let 
themselves  go.  Meanwhile,  in  the  child  of  nature 
we  have  a  most  sympathetic  and  lovable  figure. 

The  typical  French  playwright  of  to-day  uses 
little  other  material  than  this  familiar  "triangle." 
His  task  it  is  to  ring  the  changes  upon  that  hack- 
neyed instrument  in  ever  new  and  more  subtle 
ways.  In  Maurice  Donnay's  The  Return  from 
Jerusalem^  for  example,  a  social  and  intellectual  is 
substituted  for  the  more  customary  sexual  interest. 

This,  again,  is  a  thesis  play,  throwing  little  or  no 

201 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

new  light  upon  an  old  question,  though  it  threshes 
that  question  out  in  numberless  discussions.  It  is, 
too,  a  special  case  and  incapable  of  general  appli- 
cation. The  Jewish  heroine  leads  on  the  Gentile 
Utopian  to  an  abandonment  of  his  wife  and 
children.  They  go  to  Jerusalem  for  a  honeymoon, 
and  at  length  he  realizes  that  it  is  Judaism,  and 
not  world  peace,  that  his  mistress  and  her  Jewish 
associates  are  aiming  at.  Meanwhile  we  have  a 
notable  conflict  of  racial  prejudices  and  ideals. 
Naturally  there  is  much  non-dramatic  debate  con- 
cerning the  rights  and  wrongs  of  individuals,  but 
very  little  reference  to  mutual  responsibilities. 

One  other  type  of  French  dramatist  deserves  at 
least  mention  before  this  part  of  the  discussion  is 
brought  to  a  close.  The  tradition  of  theatricism 
founded  by  Scribe  in  France  has  been  chiefly  con- 
tinued, formerly  by  Sardou,  latterly  by  Monsieur 
Henri  Bernstein.  A  number  of  this  author's 
plays,  in  badly  adapted  and  mutilated  versions, 
have  been  presented  on  the  American  stage  with 
varying  success.  Monsieur  Bernstein's  method 
is  melodramatic;  he  builds  his  plot  around  a  single 

"big  situation,"  so  that  often  his  preliminary  acts 
202 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

are  scarcely  more  than  expository,  while  the  con- 
cluding ones  are  largely  perfunctory.  The  Thief 
relates  the  story  of  a  wife  so  infatuated  with  her 
husband  that,  to  retain  his  favor,  she  sacrifices 
not  only  her  own  honor  but  also  the  reputation  of 
an  innocent  youth — ^all  this  chiefly  to  create  an 
opportunity  for  a  ''big  scene."  Israel  works  up  to 
a  climax  wherein  the  anti-Semite  hero  learns  from 
his  proud  Gentile  mother  that  he  is  the  illegitimate 
son  of  the  very  Jew  he  has  been  reviling.  The 
situation,  as  usual,  is  ingeniously  elaborated  and 
*'held"  for  all  its  possibilities;  but  the  device  is 
entirely  transparent  in  its  theatricism.  There  is 
no  possible  significance  to  the  play,  because  the 
characters  are  unreal,  and  the  theme  of  anti- 
Semitism  is  utilized  solely  as  a  basis  for  melodrama. 
In  VAssaut,  again.  Monsieur  Bernstein  has  pro- 
duced one  more  "well-made  play"  with  a  valueless 
plot  and  a  second  act  built  up  with  admirable  sus- 
pense to  a  startling  climax.  As  for  Le  Secret,  it  has 
been  called  in  Paris  his  strongest  work.  The  chief 
figure  is  a  sort  of  female  lago,  who,  loving  her 
husband,  yet  spends  her  leisure  in  wrecking  the 

happiness  of  all  about  her.     Eventually  she  ob- 

203 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

serves  the  Bernstein  tradition  and  confesses^ — not 
only  to  her  husband,  but  to  her  friend,  Henriette, 
whose  life  she  has  so  cordially  tried  to  ruin.  One 
inevitably  regrets  that  this  dramatist's  ingenuity 
is  not  given  to  more  permanent  and  vital  matter. 

Another  master  of  the  theatre-drama  is  Mon- 
sieur Henry  Kistemaeckers,  the  Belgian  play- 
wright, whose  melodrama.  La  Flamhee,  has  of  late 
been  produced  in  England  as  The  Turning  Point 
and  in  America  as  The  Spy.  In  this  piece,  with 
fine  suspense,  a  skilfully  devised  fable  presents  an 
antipathetic  hero  who  gradually  wins  the  sympa- 
thies of  the  audience  at  the  same  time  that  he 
becomes  persona  grata  with  the  respectable  charac- 
ters in  the  play.  But  it  all  amounts  to  nothing 
better  than  clever  craftsmanship.  It  is  the  antith- 
esis of  Chains  or  Les  Avaries  or  Rutherford  and 
Son.  Life  and  the  theatre  are  harmonized  only  by 
drama  that  stands  somewhere  between  these  poles. 

It  would,  of  course,  be  possible  to  prolong  the 

discussion  of  the  modern  Continental  stage  to  an 

indefinite  length.     What  has  already  been  said, 

however,  must  suffice  for  the  present  purposes. 

It  has  been   seen  that  European  playwrights  of 
204 


THE      CONTINENTALS 

to-day,  with  a  few  notable  exceptions,  are  absorbed 
in  realism  and  the  discussion  of  ''problems"  upon 
the  stage.  In  some  cases  this  quest  of  actuality 
and  of  didacticism  has  not  seriously  handicapped 
these  authors'  work  as  drama.  In  most  cases, 
however,  it  has.  The  difficulty  of  harmonizing  art 
and  ethics  is,  of  course,  as  pronounced  to-day  as  it 
was  in  Plato's  time.  Few  writers  succeed  in  over- 
coming this  difficulty.  When  they  add  symbolism 
rampant  and  even  the  most  inscrutable  mysticism, 
they  merely  increase  tenfold  the  impossibility  of 
the  finest  results.  As  for  crass  naturalism,  its  in- 
herent tendency  is  the  destruction  of  all  that  is 
most  essential  to  the  highest  dramatic  art.  Mr,  John 
Galsworthy,  as  before  noted,  has  prophesied  two 
main  courses  for  the  EngUsh  drama :  a  reahsm"faith- 
ful  to  the  seething  and  multiple  life  around  us," 
and  "a,  twisting  and  delicious  stream"  bearing 
on  its  breast  ''new  barques  of  poetry."  As  for 
Continental  Europe  to-day,  the  channel  of  natural- 
ism is  chiefly  navigated;  the  stream  of  poetry,  "emo- 
tionalizing us  by  its  diversity  and  purity  of  form 
and  invention,"  is  now  followed  with  distinguished 

success  almost  solely  by  Monsieur  Edmond  Rostand. 

205 


VI 

PROSPECTIVE 

NEITHER  its  bitter  opponents  nor  its 
outspoken  critics  ever  hesitate  to  say 
all  that  they  think  or  feel  with  regard 
to  the  defects  and  the  perversions  of  the  stage. 
The  principal  points  of  attack  are,  of  course,  the 
moral  and  the  commercial.  The  drama  is  most 
usually  assailed  on  the  score  either  of  its  respon- 
sibilities as  a  disseminator  of  good  or  bad  precept 
and  example,  or  of  its  artistic  standards  as  they  are 
affected  by  the  business  end  of  theatrical  enterprise. 
It  has  been  a  long  time  since  the  Reverend 
Jeremy  Collier  took  up  the  cudgels  in  defense  of 
decency  on  the  stage.  The  drama  in  his  day  pre- 
sented ''a  world  in  which  the  ladies  are  like  very 
profligate,  impudent,  and  unfeeling  men,  and  in 
which  the  men  are  too  bad  for  any  place  but 
Pandemonium."  Collier,  however,  did  not  de- 
mand  the   instant   suppression   of   the   theatre. 

Being  a  wholly  rational  man,  he  understood  the 
206 


PROSPECTIVE 

value  of  the  stage  as  an  instrument  of  social 
betterment.  He  knew,  too,  that  the  drama  springs 
from  a  fundamental  human  impulse  and  necessity 
that  can  never  be  eradicated  by  any  mere  legal 
enactment.  It  is  certainly  deplorable  that  all 
opponents  of  the  stage  have  not  realized  this 
important  fact.  The  after-effects  of  the  complete 
suppression  of  the  theatre  during  the  Common- 
wealth were  entirely  visible  to  Jeremy  Collier, 
and  their  significance  was  more  than  plain.  So  he 
laid  about  him  valiantly  and  sensibly  and  brought 
even  the  doughty  Dryden  to  his  knees  in  honest 
contrition.  And  since  that  day,  although  the 
theatre  has  often  been  made  a  place  of  exhibition 
for  indecency  and  vulgarity,  no  English  or  Ameri- 
can playwright  of  any  notable  talent  has  dared 
openly  to  commend  vice  and  to  condemn  virtue. 
Collier  was  no  compromiser,  but  he  stood  between 
the  excesses  of  the  Puritans  on  the  one  hand  and 
the  Restoration  dramatists  on  the  other,  occupying 
a  sane  and  practical  middle  ground. 

That  the  modem  theatre  is  an  institution  of 
evil  is  a  contention  that  may  be  refuted  by  the 

mere  mention  of  the  most  popular  plays  of  recent 

207 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

years.  The  work  of  Bronson  Howard,  of  Augustus 
Thomas,  of  Edmond  Rostand,  of  James  M.  Barrie, 
and  of  many  others  is,  ahnost  without  exception, 
edifying.  So  also  are  a  large  majority  of  the  plays 
by  other  writers  which  have  achieved  notable 
success  on  the  Anglo-Saxon  stage :  The  Servant  in 
the  House,  The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor  Back, 
The  Piper,  The  Blue  Bird,  Pomander  Walk,  The 
Dawn  of  a  To-morrow,  The  Melting  Pot,  The 
County  Chairman,  The  College  Widow,  Don,  Rose- 
mary, Old  Heidelberg — the  list  might  be  extended 
to  tedium.  As  for  the  problem  play,  like  Greek 
tragedy  it  properly  tends  to  become  ''a  pulpit 
from  which  you  have  sermons  upon  conscience 
which  go  to  move  the  inner  strings  of  the  heart 
as  much  as  any  sermon  that  was  ever  preached." 
''I  have  not  been  an  habitual  frequenter  of  the 
theatre,"  said  John  Stuart  Blackie,  in  the  course 
of  his  famous  toast  to  the  drama  delivered  in  1876, 
"but  whenever  I  could  spare  a  free  evening  I  have 
gone  to  see  the  play  that  had  the  run  of  the  season; 
but  I  never  went  to  see  a  play  that  had  anything 
base  or  degrading  in  it.    When  I  was  in  London, 

jQve  or  six  years  ago,  there  were  two  plays  which 
208 


PROSPECTIVE 

had  the  run  of  the  season:  the  one  was  called 
Leah,  and  the  other  was  called  The  Bells.  The 
whole  moral  of  Leah  is  the  evangeUcal  virtue  of 
forgiveness.  And  if  it  ever  was  possible  for  a 
preacher  using  the  styles  of  conventional  theology 
— if  it  was  ever  possible  for  him  to  make  men  feel 
the  horror  of  a  violated  conscience,  he  could  not 
present  a  sermon  more  impressive  than  is  exhibited 
before  us  in  that  noble  melodrama,  The  Bells. ^* 

Of  course,  the  morals  of  Leah  and  The  Bells, 
as  of  Shakespeare  and  of  Sophocles,  are  implicit 
and  not  explicit.  This  distinction  has,  unfortu- 
nately, not  always  been  understood  by  well-inten- 
tioned, if  literal-minded,  advocates  of  the  didactic. 
It  has  seemed  impossible  for  some  of  them  to 
understand  that,  though  a  great  artist  rarely  if 
ever  preaches  directly,  there  is  inherent  in  all 
great  art  an  unmistakable  and  emphatic  ethical 
significance. 

As  for  the  artistic  deficiencies  of  the  modem 

drama,  there  is,  obviously,  a  very  great  deal  to  be 

said,  pro  and  con.    Perhaps  much  of  the  current 

debate  regarding  the  relations  of  the  stage  to 

literature  has  been  inspired  by  the  extreme  latter- 
14  209 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

day  success  of  the  playwright  and  consequent 
jealousy  on  the  part  of  other  authors.  There  is  a 
marked  modern  tendency  to  demand  entertain- 
ment that  forces  attention,  rather  than  art  that 
requires  for  its  success  a  large  measure  of  voluntary 
consideration  on  the  part  of  the  spectator.  The 
twentieth  century  will  hearken  to  little  except 
what  is  so  interesting  of  itself  that  it  is  almost 
incapable  of  being  ignored.  The  tendency  in 
education,  indeed,  is  to  make  interest  the  basis  of 
everything;  the  old  disciplinary  studies,  which 
depended  upon  conscious  effort  on  the  part  of 
the  pupil,  have  largely  gone  out  of  favor.  Fiction 
nowadays  has  to  be  spiced  with  a  hurry  of  action 
and  plot.  Novelty  is  in  far  greater  demand  than 
are  many  other  and  more  substantial  elements. 
On  the  stage  each  new  idea  that  succeeds  starts  a 
fashion.  Everybody  is  writing  business  plays,  or 
psychic  plays,  or  glorified  melodrama,  or  slum  plays, 
or  whatever  is  most  popular  at  the  moment.  A  play 
that  does  not  by  novelty,  plot,  situation,  or  other- 
wise make  an  early  and  ever-increasing  demand 
upon  our  interest  can  hardly  hope  to  succeed,  no 

matter  how  important  it  may  be  from  the  stand- 
210 


PROSPECTIVE 

point  of  character  revelation,  of  problem  propound- 
ing, or  of  the  reflection  of  truth.  The  playwright 
makes  good  in  proportion  as  he  observes  the  law 
of  the  economy  of  attention. 

If,  then,  success  in  the  drama  depends  chiefly 
on  the  ability  to  hold  a  wavering  and  unstable 
interest,  rather  than  upon  the  power  to  portray 
the  truth,  it  is  not  altogether  surprising  that  many 
of  our  modem  plays  should  be  built  for  the  former 
purpose  only.  The  playwright,  in  holding  the 
mirror  up  to  nature,  aims  to  grip  the  absorbed 
and  growing  interest  of  his  auditors.  He  may  do 
both;  he  must  do  the  latter.  Often  enough  he 
falls  between  two  stools.  Frequently  he  is  in- 
teresting at  the  expense  of  truth.  Once  in  a  while 
he  is  truthful  at  the  expense  of  interest. 

At  all  events,  appreciation  of  the  drama  requires 

less  of  conscious  effort  than  does  appreciation  of 

any  other  art.    On  the  other  hand,  it  is  wholly 

wrong  to  draw  the  conclusion  that  the  spread  of  a 

popular  taste  for  the  theatre  is  a  mark  of  decadence. 

This  pessimistic  view  is  largely  the  result  of  that 

perennial    confusion    of    drama    with    literature 

which  has  been  elsewhere  discussed  in  the  present 

211 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

treatise.  Once  we  begin  to  comprehend  that  the 
acted  drama  is  really  a  distinct  art,  having  no  aim 
to  substitute  for  literature,  we  realize  that  a  grow- 
ing popular  taste  for  the  stage  means  simply  a 
growing  popular  appreciation  of  a  potent  means 
of  helpful  comment  on  life.  The  written  play  is 
at  best  but  the  rough  scaffolding  upon  which  the 
actors,  the  scene  painters,  the  carpenters,  and  the 
stage  manager  build  up  the  finished  work  of  art. 
The  creative  imagination  of  all  these  men  and 
women,  as  well  as  of  the  author,  has  done  its  share 
toward  the  final  achievement. 

Undoubtedly  the  craving  for  success  has  led 
many  playwrights  to  work  too  often  with  their 
eyes  on  the  box-office  rather  than  on  life.  Ideals 
and  standards  of  veracity  are  frequently  thus 
disregarded.  Originality  itself  is  apparently  held 
undesirable.  As  for  the  producers,  many  of  them 
seem  to  aim  only  at  long  New  York  runs,  howso- 
ever obtained;  while  even  the  actors,  in  many  cases, 
suffer  from  the  prevalent  mania  for  success. 

As  a  result,  our  plays  are  ever  whirling  forth 

in    frenzied    cycles   upon    usually   brief    careers. 

Accord  financial  success  to  a  drama  dealing  with 
212 


PROSPECTIVE 

a  new  or  a  long-rested  subject,  and  you  court  an 
endless  train  of  more  or  less  feeble  followers.  It 
is  as  though  the  eager  playwright,  on  the  qui  vive 
to  learn  "what  the  public  wants,"  were  always 
dashing  off  in  mad  pursuit  of  the  slightest  clew 
to  that  supreme  mystery.  Alias  Jimmy  Valentine 
and  In  the  Deep  Purple  at  once  engender  an  untold 
flock  of  underworld  melodramas,  some  of  them, 
like  Within  the  Law,  rather  better  than  their 
ancestors;  others,  like  Blackbirds  or  Alibi  Bill, 
considerably  worse.  Interest  in  the  crook  quickly 
passes  over  to  the  crook's  antagonist,  from  Arsene 
Lupin  and  Raffles  to  Sherlock  Holmes.  It  is  for 
the  dramatist  to  decide  whether  he  wiU  make  his 
arch-criminal  or  his  arch-poHceman  the  hero.  In 
the  one  event,  The  Master  Mind  or  The  Iron  Door; 
in  the  other,  The  Conspiracy  or  The  Argyle  Case. 
Put  in  a  modem,  up-to-the-minute,  dictograph- 
and-finger-print  detective,  backed  up  perhaps  by 
his  prototype  in  real  life,  and,  of  course,  when  he 
has  cleared  the  heroine  of  the  dark  suspicion,  he 
must  marry  her  incontinent.  Does  the  audience 
never  wonder  how  he  will  make  his  conclusion,  not 

being  a  Mormon,  when,  in  the  course  of  the  day's 

213 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

work,  he  is  called  upon  to  clear  another  winsome 
young  beauty  of  a  similar  stain?  Of  course,  the 
stage  and  fiction  detective,  as  a  mere  reincarnation 
of  the  knight-errant,  is  not  to  be  criticised  with  an 
over-strict  logic.  Why,  by  the  way,  has  not  Mr. 
Shaw  given  us  the  antidote  to  this  noxious  creature? 

The  crook-and-detective  cycle  will  quickly  run 
its  course  and  pass  to  a  long  and  well-earned  rest. 
Would  that  as  much  might  be  said  for  the  over- 
wrought play  of  sex!  Its  vitality  seems  unending. 
The  brutal  husband  out  of  Maternite,  having 
bobbed  up  in  Bought  and  Paid  For  and  so  emphati- 
cally lent  that  piece  the  coveted  ''punch,"  must 
perforce  reappear  in  a  handful  of  weakling  suc- 
cessors. As  for  the  woman  with  a  past,  she  now 
treads  the  boards  in  no  less  than  a  round  half- 
dozen  plays,  and  is  even  ''revived"  in  the  person 
of  poor  Paula  Tanqueray. 

Over  against  all  this  sordidness  may  be  set 

the  innocent  but  no  less  imitative  cycle  of  fantasies 

for  children.     Racketty-Packetty  House  and  Snow 

White  lead  quickly  to  The  Poor  Little  Rich  Girl 

and  A  Good  Little  Devil.    Add  to  these  a  decided 

interest  in  the   "classics" — in  Shakespeare  and 
214 


PROSPECTIVE 

Sheridan  and  Goldsmith — and  it  is  easy  to  predict 
a  ''romantic  revival,"  especially  when  bald  nat- 
uralism has  so  obviously  reached  its  twilight. 
Finally  and  incontestably,  it  is  established  that 
author,  producer,  and  player  will  whenever  possible 
keep  their  feverish  fingers  upon  the  public  pulse 
and  follow  the  nearest  fashion. 

However,  this  rather  disheartening  attitude  is 
not  universal.  Happily  there  are  still  a  few  men 
and  women  of  the  theatre  whose  souls  are  above 
mere  dollars  and  whose  worthy  ideals  clamor  for 
fulfilment.  What  they  have  been  often  chiefly 
hampered  by  is  the  current  tendency  to  elaborate 
accessories.  With  that  abuse  showing  signs  of 
abatement,  the  horizon  of  hope  begins  to  brighten. 
The  truth  of  life  and  feeling  seems  likely  to  gain 
a  better  and  better  chance  of  portrayal,  as  the 
demand  for  photographic  and  graphophonic  trivi- 
ality decreases.  Obviously  we  are  getting  beyond 
that  childish  state  of  mind  which  marvels  exces- 
sively at  "real  tubs"  simply  because  they  are 
shown  behind  the  footlights. 

Of  course,  it  is  unjust  to  foist  upon  authors, 

producers,  and  players  the  entire  responsibility 

215 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

for  our  slow  dramatic   progress.     Complaint  is 

often  made  that  the  American  public  does  not 

take  the  theatre  so  seriously  as  it  is  taken  in 

France  or  Germany.    The  Continental  is  said  to 

go  to  the  playhouse  to  think,  expecting  to  carry 

something  of  importance  away  with  him,  whereas 

the  American  purposes  merely  to  forget,  and  is 

satisfied  if  he  has  been  enabled  to  do  so  from  the 

rise  to  the  fall  of  the  curtain.    This  is,  doubtless, 

an  exaggerated  criticism,  applicable  solely  to  a 

limited  class  of  stage  entertainments  and  not  to 

the  better  drama,  either  native  or  imported.    To 

infer  a  dramatic  decadence  from  the  popularity  of 

vaudeville   and   musical   comedy   is   a   common 

fallacy.    It  takes  all  kinds  of  people  to  make  up  a 

world,  and  possibly  all  kinds  of  entertainment  to 

divert  their  leisure.     One  man  prefers  ragtime; 

another,  Beethoven.    This  fellow  loves  a  chromo; 

that  one  likes  Fra  Angelico.  That  the  drama  grows 

in  popularity  in  the  face  of  so  much  competition 

from  the  mere  ''shows"  is  suflficient  evidence  of 

the  drama's  vitality. 

Certainly  it  is  well  for  any  people  that  so 

influential  an  institution  as  their  theatre  should 
216 


PROSPECTIVE 

be  cultivated  with  intelligence  and  care.  To  amuse 
and  entertain  at  the  same  time  that  you  educate 
and  civilize  may  not  be  the  only  possible  means, 
but  it  is  surely  one  of  the  most  efficacious.  The 
philanthropist  who  can  make  it  possible  for  the 
eighty  per  cent,  of  young  people  above  the  age 
of  fourteen  who  desert  our  public  schools  to  have 
within  their  means  that  sort  of  amusement  that 
shall  be  most  ennobling  will  do,  perhaps,  as  admir- 
able a  deed  as  he  who  distributes  Ubraries.  The 
popularity  and  the  inexpensiveness  of  motion 
pictures  are  bound  to  result  in  municipal  theatres 
for  their  exhibition  and  their  improvement.  Per- 
chance these  prospective  public-owned  homes  of 
motography,  together  with  an  increased  output 
of  the  right  sort  of  drama,  will  yet  result  in  the 
municipal  stock  company  with  its  minimum  price 
of  admission.  Surely  it  would  be  a  splendid  experi- 
ment on  the  part  of  wealth  in  America  to  endow 
and  to  foster  such  a  movement. 

If  the  public  be  really  responsible  for  much 
of  the  retardation  of  our  modem  drama,  ona  of 
the  best  ways  in  which  it  can  prepare  to  throw  off 

this  onerous  responsibility  is  to  cultivate  the  habit 

217 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

of  reading  plays.  The  contention  of  this  treatise 
throughout  has  been  that  true  plays  are  written 
to  be  acted,  rather  than  merely  read.  Neverthe- 
less, by  endeavoring  to  supply  imaginatively  the 
details  of  stage  production,  the  reader  of  plays 
can  imdoubtedly  increase  his  qualifications  as  an 
appreciative  playgoer.  Some  people  are  repelled 
by  the  shorthand  method  of  stage  directions  and 
the  constant  repetition  of  the  names  of  the  charac- 
ters before  the  various  speeches.  However,  these 
things  exist  likewise  in  other  forms  of  fiction, 
though  more  or  less  carefully  disguised.  Such  an 
aversion,  surely,  ought  easily  to  be  overcome. 
Plays  are  quintessential  in  their  structure.  They 
are  not  padded,  as  are  far  too  many  novels.  The 
longest  stage  play  can  be  read  in  two  hours  and 
can  yet  supply  technical  and  artistic  delights  that 
no  other  fiction  can  afford.  The  novel  as  a  form 
is  loose  and  vague,  as  compared  with  the  drama. 
The  art  of  play-making  may  be  studied  as  definitely 
as  may  architecture.  The  trained  reader  loses  his 
sense  of  displeasure  at  the  subject-matter  of  such 
a  play  as  The  Thunderbolt,  for  instance,  in  his 
delighted  observation  of  its  skilful  construction. 

When  more  playgoers  find  at  least  a  part  of  their 
218 


PROSPECTIVE 

pleasure  in  such  observation  there  will  be  more  of 
that  demand  for  capable  stage  workmanship  which 
will  inevitably  produce  the  much-desired  supply- 
And  perhaps  one  of  the  best  means  of  arousing 
general  interest  in  play  structure  and  in  play  read- 
ing is  through  the  study  classes  in  schools,  literary 
clubs,  and  other  such  educational  organizations. 

At  all  events,  a  thoughtful  survey  of  the  theatri- 
cal field  in  the  second  decade  of  the  twentieth 
century  should  result  in  an  increased  optimism 
concerning  the  prospects  of  the  stage.  Elsewhere 
it  has  been  observed  how  Mr.  John  Galsworthy 
has  predicted  a  twofold  course  of  development  for 
the  drama,  and  how  Monsieur  Rostand  is  looking 
well  after  the  romantic  side,  with  Monsieur  Maeter- 
linck and  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips  among  his  leading 
coad j utors.  Even  such ' 'naturalists' '  as  Hauptmann 
occasionally  turn  to  idealism,  while  realism  flour- 
ishes under  the  cultivation  of  a  score  of  gifted 
professors,  including  Mr.  Galsworthy  himself. 
These  two  things  will  always  be,  of  course,  in  the 
drama  as  in  all  art,  so  long  as  men  are  bom  with 
leanings  either  to  analysis  or  to  synthesis,  to  the 
presentation  of  truth  in  the  form  of  detailed  obser- 
vation or  of  essential  types. 

219 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  has  traced  what  he  terms 
the  "new  drama"  back  to  the  first  performances 
of  Ibsen  in  London,  declaring  that  the  movement 
toward  decreased  self-satisfaction  on  the  part  of 
the  world  had  begun  in  fiction  about  the  middle 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  Of  course,  this  "new 
drama  "  of  Mr.  Shaw's  is  a  "  drama  of  ideas  " — some- 
times with  the  drama  left  out,  if  not  also  occasion- 
ally the  ideas.  The  modem  endeavor  being  chiefly 
to  find  out  how  to  live  respectably  without  breaking 
social  laws,  the  "new  drama"  must  be  wholly  con- 
cerned with  this  problem.  You  must  give  "the 
adult,  married,  sensible  Englishman"  life  presented 
"as  an  enormously  interesting  mass  of  problems  of 
conduct  which  every  member  of  the  audience  has 
or  may  have  to  solve  for  himself  or  herseK."  To 
repeat,  "doubts  must  be  discussed, even  if  the  result 
be  that '  drama  of  discussion '  practised  by  Euripi- 
des, Aristophanes,  Moliere,  Shakespeare,  Goethe, 
Ibsen,  Tolstoy:  in  short,  which  is  the  invariable 
sjrmptom  of  the  highest  dramatic  genius." 

It  is  observable,  first,  that  Mr.  Shaw  very 

naturally,  not  to  say  naively,  predicts  the  success 

of  the  kind  of  drama  in  which  he  excels  and  the 

failure  of  that  other  kind  in  which  he  has,  so  far, 

220 


PROSPECTIVE 

shown  himself  deficient.  Second  and  rather  more 
important,  however,  is  the  equally  obvious  fact 
that  Mr.  Shaw  forgets  that  the  drama  is  funda- 
mentally and  eternally  a  matter  of  feelings  and 
not  of  ideas,  and  that,  unless  his  ideas  are  of  such 
a  nature  that  they  will  arouse  a  strong  and  imme- 
diate emotional  accompaniment,  they  will  not, 
howsoever  brilliantly  phrased,  amount  in  their  sum 
total  to  actual  drama.  Mr.  Shaw  and  his  kind 
are  really  masquerading  preachers,  who  will  never 
succeed  in  convincing  any  considerable  portion 
of  the  public  that  they  are  in  fact  the  lions  of  the 
theatre  their  false  skins  are  meant  to  proclaim 
them.  The  intellectualist,  who,  like  Mr.  Shaw,  has 
the  unabashed  temerity  to  attempt  a  positive  and 
absolute  explanation  of  the  mystery  of  life  in 
terms  of  concrete  thought,  may  find  delight  in 
the  perpetual  debate  of  stage  puppets.  But  the 
intellectualists  will  always  be  decidedly  in  the 
minority,  whether  or  not  Dr.  Stockmann's  minority 
that  is  always  right.  It  is  all  very  pleasant  to  be 
epigrammatic  and  to  prick  with  unerring  aim  the 
bubbles,  large  and  small,  of  hypocrisy  and  con- 
ventionality. To  be  thus  accomplished,  however, 
is  not  necessarily  to  be  dramatic. 

221 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

On  the  other  hand,  we  should  not  lose  sight  of 
the  fact  that  the  stage  in  our  day  is  chiefly  occupied 
with  dramas  in  which  ideas  are  inherent.  The 
rights  of  the  individual  as  against  his  duties  to 
his  environment  form  the  basis  of  nine-tenths  of 
the  successful  plays,  since  Ibsen  at  least.  But  the 
drama  does  not  teach  its  lessons  directly  through 
mere  discussion.  The  boards  of  the  stage  will 
never  make  a  bridge  straight  from  the  mind  of 
the  playwright  to  the  mind  of  the  playgoer.  The 
route  must  lie  through  the  latter's  heart,  via  his 
imagination.  The  thinkers  of  our  time — ^Tolstoy, 
Brieux,  Shaw — ^may  well  utilize  the  drama;  but, 
if  they  would  bend  it  to  their  purpose,  they  must 
in  turn  yield  to  its  fundamental  laws.  Meanwhile, 
the  unthinking  imitators,  with  cleverness  enough 
to  submit  to  the  drama's  requirements,  even  if 
without  the  least  intellectual  depth,  will  continue 
to  reap  the  rewards  of  that  brilliant,  if  transitory, 
success  which  is  so  exasperating  to  men  of  greater 
mind  and  less  adaptability. 

Of  course,  these  things  are  gifts.    A  seeing  eye 

is  one  gift,  and  the  power  to  build  emotion-lifting 

drama  is  another.    The  possessor  of  the  first  may 

never  gain  the  second.    At  aU  events,  he  cannot 

222 


PROSPECTIVE 

use  it  without  striving.  Certainly,  the  combined 
power  is  worth  seeking.  To  be  able  to  think  out 
clearly  defined  conclusions  from  the  ever-shifting 
conditions  and  emphasis  that  characterize  our 
modern  existence;  to  make  application,  sane  and 
wholesome,  of  these  conclusions  to  the  conduct  of 
average  men  and  women;  to  illustrate  this  conduct 
and,  by  means  of  it,  the  truth  that  imderlies  it, 
in  the  terms  of  an  art  which  draws  for  its  unlimited 
assistance  upon  all  the  other  arts,  and  which  repre- 
sents the  climax  of  the  human  creative  faculty — 
what  more  splendid  achievement  could  a  true  seer 
and  prophet  in  this  world  long  for?  The  influence 
of  the  theatre,  so  long  restricted  by  narrowness 
and  by  crudity  of  popular  taste,  is  just  beginning 
to  reveal  its  unbounded  strength.  America  alone 
employs  fifty-five  thousand  people  annually,  in 
seven  hundred  companies,  playing  an  average 
season  of  thirty  weeks,  in  thirty-two  hundred 
theatres,  and  pays  out  a  hundred  miUion  dollars 
for  theatrical  entertainment.  The  rate  of  growth 
is  enormous.  The  playhouse  has  become  one  of 
the  three  or  four  greatest  influences  in  modern  life. 
Meanwhile,  theatre-goers  are  everywhere  engag- 
ing in  earnest  efforts  at  organization  for  the  pur- 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

pose  of  bettering  the  drama  by  means  of  their 
tremendous,  but  hitherto  unconeentrated,  power. 
If  the  law  of  supply  and  demand  governs  the 
dramatic  output,  then  the  demand  is  to  be  reso- 
lutely elevated  for  the  sake  of  a  correspondingly 
uplifted  supply.  The  business  men  of  the  theatrical 
world,  as  well  as  the  practising  dramatists,  seem 
willing  to  meet  the  patrons  of  the  theatre  half-way. 
With  complete  demonstration  of  the  efficiency  of 
organized  play-going  there  will  undoubtedly  come 
complete  surrender  to  the  reasonable  demands  of 
the  organization. 

There  is,  too,  a  healthful  tendency  toward 
simplification.  Stage  realism  has  too  often  been 
merely  cluttering.  We  shall,  doubtless,  never  go 
back  to  the  bare  Elizabethan  platform;  but  the 
time  may  well  be  expected  to  come  when  excessive 
elaboration  in  the  non-essential  will  be  confined 
to  purely  spectacular  entertainment,  and  drama 
per  se  will  be  permitted  to  evolve  without  this 
hampering  accoutrement.  The  activities  of  Mr. 
Gordon  Craig,  for  instance,  promise  to  contribute 
to  this  highly  desirable  consummation.  His 
recent  designs  for  stage  settings  have  consisted 

almost   exclusively  of   screens   of  various   sizes, 
224. 


PROSPECTIVE 

grouped,  colored,  and  lighted  with  a  view  to  sug- 
gesting that  mood  which  the  actor  himself  com- 
pletes and  defines.  Similarly,  the  notable  efforts 
of  Dr.  Max  Reinhart  are  in  the  direction  of  flat- 
toned  effects,  landscapes  in  silhouette,  and  even 
costume  that  suggests,  rather  than  reproduces, 
the  details  of  actuality.  What  both  these  innova- 
tors are  aiming  at,  certainly,  is  a  harmonious 
co-operation  among  the  various  arts  that  enter 
into  the  acted  drama.  It  is  unfortunate  but  true 
that,  in  much  of  our  recent  realistic  stage  produc- 
tion, these  arts,  instead  of  working  together,  have 
violently  quarrelled.  At  all  events,  mere  hoUow, 
if  glittering,  stagecraft,  such  as  Mr.  Belasco  and 
his  followers  chiefly  rely  upon,  cannot  much 
longer  be  employed  to  conceal  the  utter  lack  of 
true  drama,  as  well  as  the  complete  absence  of 
dramatic  truth.  Facile  photography  and  expert 
stage-carpentry  cannot  permanently  substitute  for 
actual  criticism  of  life.  Women  are  said  to  be 
considerably  in  the  majority  among  modem  play- 
goers, as  they  doubtless  are  in  the  patronage  of  all 
the  other  arts.  And  women  everywhere  are  be- 
coming alert  to  the  importance  of  the  drama;  even 

in  the  remoter  districts,  where  plays  are  rarely 
15  225 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

acted  except  by  amateurs,  women's  organizations 
and  public  libraries  are  keeping  in  touch  with  the 
dramatic  development  in  the  urban  centres,  and 
preparing  themselves,  their  neighbors,  and  the 
rising  generation  to  appreciate  and  so  to  demand 
the  best  the  stage  can  afford  in  the  days  to  come. 
There  have  of  late  been  certain  notable  failures 
in  the  direction  of  the  endowed  or  experimental 
theatre.  Fundamental  lessons  have  been  gained 
from  experience,  and  these  will  undoubtedly  pave 
the  way  for  discreeter  and  more  substantial  prog- 
ress. Theatre  societies  are  moving  cautiously 
but  securely  toward  the  production  of  new  and 
standard  plays  and  toward  experimentation  in  the 
unexplored  possibilities  of  the  stage.  Toy  Theatres, 
Little  Theatres,  unions  of  theatre  clubs.  Drama 
Leagues,  and  other  such  playgoers'  organizations 
are  all  reliable  straws  indicative  of  the  dramatic 
wind.  We  have  even  at  last  achieved  instances 
here  in  America  of  the  civic  theatre,  and  conducted 
upon  that  foundation  of  thorough  democracy  which 
is  the  sine  qua  non  of  all  such  ventures.  Withal, 
practical  men  and  women  are  displacing  the 
rhapsodic  dreamers  in  the  planning  and  the  con- 
duct of  most  enterprises  of  this  sort.  The  vision- 
226 


PROSPECTIVE 

aries,  doubtless,  are  usually  the  pioneers;  but  the 
lesser  men,  who  merely  know  how  to  apply  the 
principles  of  the  ideal  to  actual  conditions,  must 
do  the  concrete  work.  In  such  an  organization  as 
the  Abbey  Theatre  Company,  of  Dublin,  we  have 
a  significant  and  harmonious  union  of  the  various 
elements  necessary  to  success  in  dramatic  reform. 
Beginning  humbly  and  modestly,  the  Irish  Players 
and  their  authors  achieved  masterpieces.  There 
were  enthusiasm  and  talent,  and  both  were  under 
the  guidance  of  judgment  and  self-control.  ''It 
wasn't  for  money  we  worked  then,"  declares  Miss 
Sara  Allgood,  one  of  the  most  gifted  players  of 
the  Abbey  troupe,  speaking  of  their  start.  ''It 
was  not,  indeed.  We  got  between  five  and  fifteen 
shillings  a  week,  and  that  only  if  we  were  lucky. 
Often  we  got  nothing  at  all.  When  I  was  raised 
to  fifteen  shillings  a  week,  I  thought  I  owned  the 
world.  .  .  .  Many's  the  time  I've  dressed 
myself  for  my  parts  in  clothes  I  made  from  my 
mother's  old  dresses.  And  Kerrigan  used  to  bor- 
row things  from  his  house  to  use  as  stage  properties, 
— once  a  poker,  another  time  a  blanket."   After  all, 

.     ;     .    never  anything  can  be  amiss, 
When  simpleness  and  duty  tender  it. 

227 


THE      DRAMA      TO-DAY 

And  when  to  simpleness  and  duty  we  add  the  high 
gifts  of  a  Yeats,  a  Lady  Gregory,  a  Synge,  and 
many  more,  all  under  the  governance  of  managerial 
wisdom,  something  of  note  in  dramatic  achieve- 
ment may  well  be  expected. 

When  all  is  said  and  done,  of  course,  the  hope 
for  the  theatre  lies  most  largely  in  the  hands  of 
the  highest  citizenship  of  to-day.  There  was  once 
a  puritanic  tendency  to  abandon  the  playhouse 
to  the  devil  with  all  his  power  to  assume  a  pleasing 
shape,  that,  as  he  continues  very  potent  with  such 
spirits,  he  might  abuse  us  to  damn  us.  But  the 
movement  at  present  is  decidedly  in  the  opposite 
direction.  What  its  results  may  be  it  is  futile  to 
prophesy.  We  may  say,  at  least,  that,  if  we  live 
in  an  age  that  is  to  prove  itself  at  all  worthy  of  a 
first-class  expression,  the  drama,  more  than  any 
other  form,  promises  to  become  the  medium.  And 
it  certainly  is  within  the  power  of  the  public  to 
control  the  proportion  of  finished  and  edifying 
drama  to  the  entire  mass  of  popular  amusements. 


228 


INDEX 


Ahh6  d'Aubignac,  51 
Abbey  Theatre  plays,  160-68,  227 
Ade,  George,  59,  99,  100 
Admirable  Crichton,  The,  156,  157 
Aiglon,  U,  188,  191 
Alabama,  75 
Alfieri,  17 

Alias  Jimmy  Valentine,  213 
Alibi  Bill,  213 

Alice  Sil-by-the-Fire,  156,  157 
Allgood,  Sara,  227 
Also  sprach  Zarathustra,  176 
Anglin,  Margaret,  98 
Anli-MoLrimony,  82,  83 
Archer,  WiUiam,  155 
Argyle  Case,  The,  213 
Ariane  et  Barbe-Bleue,  186 
Aristophanes,  220 
Aristotle,  9,  150 
Arizona,  75,  78 
As  a  Man  Thinks,  76-78,  122 
Assaut,  L',  21,  203 
Avariis,  Les  {Damaged  Goods),  197, 
198,  204 

B 
Bagatelle,  196 
Baker,  Elizabeth,  144 
Baker,  George  Pierce,  13,  62 
Barker,  GranviUe,  32,  106,  142- 

144,  148,  150,  151,  177 
Barrie,  James  M.,  106,  155,  156- 

160,  208 


Bataille,  Henri,  194,  200 

Battle,  The,  71 

Beau  Brummel,  67 

Before  Sunrise,  177 

Belasco,  David,  95-98,  103,  225 

Bells,  The,  208 

Benefit  of  the  Dmibt,  The,  115 

Bennett,  Arnold,  106,  147,  150, 

151 
Bernstein,  Henri,  21,  169,  202-204 
Besier,  Rudolf,  147,  148 
Blackbirds,  213 
Blackie,  John  Stuart,  208 
Blindness  of  Virtue,  The,  153 
Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon,  A,  45 
Blv£  Bird,  The,  {L'Oiseau  bleu), 

186,  208 
Boots  and  Saddles,  17 
Boss,  The,  90 
Boucicault,  Dion,  105 
Bought  and  Paid  For,  73,  74,  85, 

88,214 
Boyle,  William,  164,  166,  167 
Brand,  176 
Brieux,  Eugene,  133, 169, 194, 196- 

200,  222 
Broadhurst,  George  H.,  72-75,  85 
Brunetifere,  9 

Buchanan,  Thompson,  102 
Builder  of  Bridges,  The,  152 
Building  Fund,  The,  166 
Bunty  Pulls  the  Strings,  150 
Butterflies'  War,  The  {Schmetter- 

linsschaft),  183 

229 


INDEX 


Candida,  140,  141 
Canterbury  Pilgrims,  The,  82 
Captain  Jinks,  93 
Carmen,  17 

Case  of  Becky,  The,  96,  97 
Case  of  Rebellious  Susan,  The,  13. 
122 

Caste,  66,  105,  106 
Cato,  45 
Cenci,  The,  45 
Chains,  144,  145,  204 
Chambers,  Haddon,  106,  155 
Chantecler,  12,  46,  188,  191-193 
Chesterton,  Gilbert  K.,  136 
Chorus  Lady,  The,  101 
City,  The,  68-70,  85 
Climbers,  The,  67 
Cohan,  George  M.,  102 
Colleen  Bawn,  The,  105 
College  Widow,  The,  99,  208 
Collier,  Jeremy,  206,  207 
Colorado,  75 
Commuters,  The,  102 
Concert,  The,  96 
Connais-toi,  194 
Conspiracy,  The,  213 
Countess  Julia,  The,  175 
County  Chairman,  The,  99,  208 
Craig,  Gordon,  50,  224 
Crothers,  Rachel,  102 
Cymbeline,  12 

Cyrano  de  Bergerac,  10,  55,   188. 
189-191 

D 

Damaged  Goods  (Les  Avaries),  197. 

198 
Dame  aux  CamSlias,  La,  18 

230 


Dance  of  Death,  The,  175 

D'Annunzio,    Gabriel,    169,    193, 
194 

Daughter  of  Jorio,  The,  194 

Daughters  of  Men,  The,  72 

Dawn  of  a  To-M arrow,  The,  71, 208 

DMale,  Le,  194 

Deux   Versants,   Les    (The   Great 

Divide),  80 
Dickens,  105 
Diderot,  37 
Disraeli,  149 

Doll's  House,  A,  110,  172,  173 
Don,  148,  208 

Donnay,  Maurice,  194,  201,  202 
Drake,  149 
Dryden,  42,  207 
Dumas  ^Zs,  27,  105 
Dumas  pere,  105 

E 

Easiest  Way,  The,  36,  71,  85-88, 
113 

Eaton,  Walter  Pritchard,  102 
Egypt,  91,  92,  98 
Ehre,  Die  (Honor),  180,  182, 183 
Eldest  Son,  The,  129,  145 
Enemy  of  the  People,  An,  110,  173. 
176,221 

Enfant  Prodigue,  L',  26 
Enigme,  L',  194 

Ervine,  St.  John  G.,  145,  165,  167 
Es  lebe  das  Leben!,  184 
Euripides,  220 


Fairfax,  Marion,  102 
Faith  Healer,  The,  81,  82 
Family  Failing,  166 


INDEX 


Fanny's  First  Play,  29,  140 
Fascinating  Mr.  Vandervelt,  The, 

152 
Father,  The,  174,  176 
Faust,  18,  176 
Femme  nue.  La,  200,  201 
Femme  seule.  La,  198-200 
Fenris  the  Wolf,  82 
Fiaccolo  sotto  il  Moggio,  La  {The 

Fire  beneath  the  Ashes),  194 
Fielding,  37,  140 
Fine  Feathers,  85,  88 
Fire  beneath  the  Ashes,   The  (La 

Fiaccolo  sotto  il  Moggio),  194 
Fire  Screen,  The,  152 
Fiske,  Minnie  Maddern,  98 
Fitch,  Clyde,  17,  66-70,  93,  98 
Five  in  the  Morning,  41 
FlambSe,  La  {The  Turning  Point; 

The  Spy),  204 
Flers,  Robert  de,  80 
Fliegende  Hollander,  Der,  18 
Foi,  La,  197 
Forbes,  James,  102 
Frau-Frou,  18 
FrUhlings  Erwachen,  154 

G 

Gabriel  Schilling's  Flight,  179 
Galilean's  Victory,  The,  123 
Galsworthy,  John,  72,  106,  125- 

132,  137,  144,  145,  205,  219 
Gamblers,  The,  72 
Garrick,  42 

Gay  Lord  Quex,  The,  114 
Ghosts,  14,  36,  108,  110,  172,  173, 

198 
Gillette,  William,  64-66 
Girl  and  the  Judge,  The,  67 


Girl  of  the  Golden  West,  The,  78 
Girl  with  the  Green  Eyes,  The,  67 
GlOck  im  Winkel,  Das  {Happiness 

in  a  Comer),  183 
Godfrey,  Thomas,  61 
Goethe,  220 
Goldsmith,  106,  215 
Good  Little  Demi,  A,  214 
Good-Natured  Man,  The,  106 
Good  Reputation,  A,  184 
Gorki,  133 
Gdtterddmmerung,  18 
Governor's  Lady,  The,  97 
Gozzi,  16 

Great  Adventure,  The,  151 
Great  Divide,  The,  79-82 
Green  Stockings,  98 
Gregory,  Lady  Augusta,  164,  165, 

228 


Hagedom,  Hermann,  41 

Hal6vy,  105 

Hallam,  Lewis,  61 

Hamilton,  Cosmo,  106,  147,  153 

Hamlet,  26,  28,  38,  52,  97 

Hannele's  Ascension,  178 

Hannetons,  Les,  197 

Happiness  in  a  Comer  {Das  Gliick 

im  Winkel),  183 
Hardy,  Thomas,  128,  146 
Harte,  Bret,  78 
Harvest,  166 
Harvest  Moon,  The,  76 
Hastings,  B.  Macdonald,  106, 147, 

153,  154 
Hatton,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Frederic, 

100,  101 

231 


INDEX 


Hauptmann,  Gerhart,   169,   177- 

180,  193,  194,  219 
Hazel  Kirke,  92 
Hearts  of  Oak,  84 
Hedda  Gabler,  18 
Hegel,  9 
Heimat,  Die,  110,  111,  167,  180, 

183 
Heir  to  the  Hoorah,  The,  78 
Held  by  the  Enemy,  65 
Henrietta,  The,  64,  72 
Henry  V,  149 
Heme,  James  A.,  84 
Herod,  155 

Hervieu,  Paul,  169,  194-196,  200 
High  Road,  The,  91,  92,  98 
H indie  Wakes,  145 
His  House  in  Order,  114,  116 
Honor  (Die  Ehre),  180,  182,  183 
Houghton,  Stanley,  144,  145 
Howard,  Bronson,  64,  66,  69,  208 
Ho  wells,  William  Dean,  122 
Hugo,  Victor,  192 
Huxley,  137 
Hyacinth  Halvy,  165 
Hypocrites,  The,  122,  123 


Ibsen,  47,  51,  108,  110,  111,  133, 
140,  169-179,  181,  193,  194, 
198,  220,  222 

Illington,  Margaret,  94 

Image,  The,  165 

In  a  Balcony,  45 

In  the  Deep  Purple,  213 

In  the  Shadow  of  the  Glen,  162 

Iris,  18,  88,  112-^114 

Irish  Theatre,  The,  160-168 
232 


Iron  Door,  The,  213 
Irving,  Sir  Henry,  15,  48 
Israel,  21,  203 


Jeanne  d'Arc,  82 

Johnson,  Samuel,  42 

John  the  Baptist,  183 

Jones,  Henry  Arthur,  58,  59,  106, 

122-126,  137 
Joseph  and  his  Brethren,  150 
Joseph  Entangled,  123 
Joyzelle,  187 
Judah,  122 
Julius  Caesar,  53 
Jv^t  a  Wife,  86 
Justice,  127,  131 

K 

Kathleen  ni  Houlahan,  161 
Kennedy,  Charles  Rann,  147,  153 
Kenyon,  Charles,  94 
Kindling,  94 

Kistemaeckers,  Henry,  204 
Klein,  Charles,  70-73 
Knoblauch,  Edward,  102,  150 
Kremer,  Theodore,  17 


Labiche,  105 

Lady  from  the  Sea,  The,  171,  172 

Lady  Inger  of  Ostraat,  17 

Lady  Patricia,  148 

Lamb,  Charles,  27,  144 

Leah,  208 

Letty,  114 

Liars,  The,  124 


INDEX 


Link,  The,  175 

Lion  and  the  Mouse,  The,  71-74 

LiiUe  Eyolf,  173 

LitOe  Mary,  156,  157 

Little  Minister,  The,  156,  157 

Locke,  Edward,  102 

London  Assurance,  105 

Lonely  People,  177,  178 

Love's  Labour's  Lost,  17,  40 

Lydia  GUmore,  124,  125 

M 
Mackaye,  Percy,  41,  82,  83 
Macbeth,  36 
Madame  X,  18 
Madras  House,  The,  143 
Maeterlinck,  Maurice,  36,  37,  169, 

184-187,  192-194,  219 
Magnanimous  Lover,  The,  145,  167 
Man  and  Superman,  134,  139,  141 
Man  from  Home,  The,  102 
Man  of  the  Hour,  The,  71,  73 
Man's  Friends,  A,  90 
Margaret  Fleming,  84 
Marie  Madeleine,  186,  187 
Masefield,  John,  144,  146 
Master  Builder,  The,  170, 171, 177, 

178 
Master  Mind,  The,  213 
Mater,  82 

MalemiU,  88,  197,  214 
Matthews,  Brander,  34 
Measure  for  Measure,  187 
Meilhac,  105 
Melting  Pot,  The,  208 
Merchant  of  Venice,  The,  15 
Meredith,  George,  29,  128 
Mere  Man,  78 


Meropi,  17 

Michael  and  his  Lost  Anad,  122- 
124 

Mid-Channel,  85,    101,    116-119, 
123 

Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  A,  30 

Milestones,  150 

Mind-the-Paint  Girl,  The,  120,  121 

Mineral  Workers,  The,  166 

Mitchell,  Langdon,  98,  100 

Mixed  Marriage,  167 

Model,  The,  78 

Modem  Match,  A,  67 

Moffat,  Graham,  147,  150 

MoliSre,  33,  145,  197,  220 

Monna  Vanna,  17,  185-187 

Moody,  William  Vaughn,  79-82 

Moore,  George,  162 

Moriiuri,  183 

Moth  and  the  Flame,  The,  67 

Mrs.  Bumstead-Leigh,  98 

Mrs.  Dane's  Defense,  92,  122,  125 

Music  Master,  The,  78 

N 
Nan,  146 

New  Sin,  The,  154 
New  York  Idea,  The,  100 
Nietzsche,  136,  176,  181 
Nigger,  The,  90 

Notorious  Mrs.  Ebhsmith,  The,  116, 
117 

O 

(Edipus  the  King,  10,  17,  36 
Oiseau  bleu,  U  {The  Blue  Bird), 

186 
Old  Heidelberg,  208 
Oliver  Goldsmith,  33 

233 


INDEX 


OtheUo,  52,  118 
Otway,  42 

Our  American  Cousin,  105 
Ours,  105 


Paid  in  Full,  17,  85,  127 

Paolo  and  Francesco,  155 

Paper  Chase,  The,  149 

Parker,  Louis  Napoleon,  147 

Parsifal,  18 

Passers-by,  155 

Passing  of  the  Third  Floor  Back, 

The,  25,  27,  208 
Passing  of  the  Torch,  The,  194,  195 
Patterson,  Joseph  Medill,  74,  75 
Peer  Gynt,  18,  176 
Perplexed  Husband,  The,  152 
Perry,  Bliss,  108 
Peter  Pan,  156 
Phillips,  Stephen,  60,   106,   155, 

156,  219 
Pigeon,  The,  128 
PUlars  of  Society,  110,  172,  173, 

177 
Pinero,  Sir  Arthur  Wing,  59,  77, 

85,  106,  111-123,  137 
Piper,  The,  208 
Plato,  205 
Playboy  of  the  Western  World,  The, 

162-164 
Pomander  Walk,  25,  149,  208 
Poole,  Ernest,  90 
Poor  Little  Rich  Girl,  The,  214 
Practique  du  Thidtre,  51 
Preserving  Mr.  Panmure,  120 
Price,  The,  92 
Prince  of  Parthia,  The,  61 

234 


Princess  lointaine.  La,  188,  189 
Professor's  Love  Story,  The,  156 
Pyramvs  and  Thisbe,  30 

Q 

Quality  Street,  156,  157 
Queen  Mary,  45 

R 

Racketty-Packetty  House,  214 
Rebellion,  74 
Reinhart,  Max,  50,  225 
Return  from  Jerusalem,  The,  201, 

202 
Return  of  Peter  Grimm,  The,  95, 97, 

98 
Richardson,  37 
Richelieu,  90 
Riders  to  the  Sea,  162 
Rigoletlo,  17 

Riley,  James  Whitcomb,  84 
Rip  van  Winkle,  105 
Robe  rouge.  La,  197 
Robertson,  Tom,  105,  106 
Robinson,  Lennox,  164,  166 
Roi  s'amuse,  Le,  17 
Romance,  92,  93 
Romanesques,  Les,  188 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  10,  11,  13 
Rosemary,  149,  208 
Rosmersholm,  83,  172,  177,  178 
Rostand,  Edmond,  60,  169,  188- 

193,  194,  205,  208,  219 
Rousseau,  37,  134 
Royal  Box,  The,  33 
Rowe,  42 
Rutherford  and  Son,  145,  204 


INDEX 


s 

Sabine  Woman,  A,  79 

Sag  Harbor,  84 

Salome,  18 

Salomy  Jane,  78 

Salvation  Nell,  89 

Samaritaine,  La,  188,  189 

Sardou,  17,  105,  155,  202 

Scarecrow,  The,  82 

SchiUer,  16 

SchmeUerlinsschaft  (The  Butter- 
flies' War),  183 

School,  105 

Scrape  a'  the  Pen,  A,  150 

Scribe,  105,  202 

Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray,  The,  111, 
112,  116,  117,  124,  214 

Secret,  Le,  203 

Secret  Service,  65 

Semiramis,  17 

Sergeant  James,  17 

Servant  in  the  House,  The,  153,  208 

Shakespeare,  11, 17,  26,  27,  29,  38, 
44,  47,  48,  140,  208,  214,  220 

Shaugraun,  The,  105 

Shaw,  George  Bernard,  17,  27,  29, 
106, 108, 132-142, 148, 150, 177, 
196,  197,  214,  220-222 

Sheldon,  Edward,  84,  89-93 

SheUey,  45 

Shenandoah,  64 

Sheridan,  33,  215 

Shewing  Up  of  Blanco  Posnet,  The, 
139 

Shore  Acres,  84 

Silver  Box,  The,  128 

Slice  of  Life,  A,  158 

SmUh,  88 

Smith,  Winchell,  102 


Snow  White,  214 

Society,  105 

Sodom's  End,  180 

Soeur  Beatrice,  186    . 

Sophocles,  208 

Sophonisba,  45 

Sowerby,  Githa,  144,  146 

Spy,  The  (The  Turning  Point;  La 

FlambSe),  204 
Stafford,  45 
Stevenson,  10 
St.  John's  Fire,  184 
Stockton,  Frank  R.,  101 
Strife,  72,  128,  130,  131 
Strindberg,  169,  174-176 
Stubbornness  of  Geraldine,  The,  67 
Sudermann,  Hermann,  110,  167, 

169,  180-184 
Sumurdn,  26,  33 
Sunken  Bell,  The  (Die  Versunkene 

Glocke),  111,  177,  179,  180 
Sutro,  Alfred,  106, 147, 151-153 
Suzette,  197 
Synge,  John  Millington,  161-164, 

228 


Tarkington,  Booth,  102 
TaHuffe,  10,  23,  52 
Taylor,  Tom,  105 
Teamster  Henschell,  179 
Tempest,  The,  17 
TenaiUes,  Les,  194,  196 
Tennyson,  45,  155 
Terrible  Meek,  The,  153 
Thais,  18 

Thtroigne  de  M6ricouri,  194 
Thief,  The,  21,  203 
Third  Degree,  The,  71,  72,  74 

235 


INDEX 


Thomas,  Augustus,  22,  28,  59,  75- 

78,  118,  208 
Three  Daughters  oj  Monsieur  Du- 

pont,  The,  200 
Three  Heron  Feathers,  The,  184 
Thunderbolt,   The,  46,    116,    119, 

120,  218 
Ticket-of-Leave  Man,  The,  105 
Tolstoy,  139,  220,  222 
Tom  Jones,  140 
To-morrow,  82,  83 
Travelling  Salesman,  The,  101 
Trovatore,  II,  17 
Tully,  Richard  Walton,  102 
Turning  Point,  The  (The  Spy;  La 

Flambee),  204 
Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  The,  40 
Two  Hundred  a  Year,  116 


Versunkene     Glocke,     Die     (The 

Sunken  Bell),  111 
Voltaire,  17 
Voysey  Inheritance,  The,  143 


Warfield,  David,  98 

Waste,  143 

Way  of  the  World,  The,  67 

Weavers,  The,  178 

Webster,  John,  156 

We  Can't  Be  as  Bad  as  All  That, 

124 
Wedekind,  154 

Well  of  the  Saints,  The,  162,  164 
What  Every  Woman  Knows,  156, 

158 
What  Happened  to  Jones,  73 
What  the  Public  Wants,  151 
When  a  Man's  Single,  156 
When  It  Comes  Home,  78 
Whitewashing  Julia,  122,  124 
Why  Smith  Left  Home,  73 
Wild  Duck,  The,  172,  174 
Wilson,  Harry  Leon,  102 
Winter's  Tale,  A,  12 
Witching  Hour,  The,  76 
Within  the  Law,  213 
Woman,  The,  91 


W 

Walkeley,  A.  B.,  57,  134 

Walker,  London,  156 

Walls  of  Jericho,  The,  88,  151 

Walter,  Eugene,  84-89 


Years  of  Discretion,  100,  101 
Yeats,  William  Butler,  160-162, 

228 
Yellow  Jacket,  The,  50 
You  Never  Can  Tell,  140 


236 


/pyyjy 


RATFORD&  GREEN 


fMiP 


^1 


